Pandemic Perspectives

“It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder

It’s funny how we inherit certain talents from our parents while others seem to completely skip a generation. My mom is a great gardener. I can’t tell you how many plants I’ve received as gifts, neglected them to the point they were on the brink of death then handed them over to my Ma and she resuscitated them. As sweet as she is, she’d always offer to return them to me in all their revived glory, an offer I’d politely decline because I just couldn’t do that to the poor plant.

Every year I buy hanging baskets, usually on Victoria Day weekend in May, and set a goal of keeping them alive until my birthday in July. Not a super lofty goal but I was aiming for realistic. But this year is different. My hanging baskets are alive and well and we have flipped the calendar into September! This got me thinking that if hanging baskets can survive 2020, then so can we. I kept those suckers alive!  Me….the murderer of marigolds, the funeral director of foliage, the crusher of cacti (yes I’ve even managed to kill a cactus). I told you I was bad with plants. 

So what was different about these hanging baskets? We hang them in the same spot every year so it wasn’t like they were getting more sun than previous summers. The answer is simple – I paid more attention to them this year. Usually in the summer, we are out doing all the things we wait all winter long to enjoy. We are at the baseball diamond, going to concerts and BBQ’s, getting our fun meters filled at amusement parks, visiting friends’ cottages. But this year, we weren’t able to do those things. Instead we spent more time at home, even transforming a part of our house into a home office since working remotely was encouraged. 

While working from home is not without its challenges, it has increased my work life balance in some ways. I can make use of my lunch hour by throwing in a load of laundry, grabbing a few essentials from the grocery store, getting dinner in the oven, emptying the dishwasher. And I can water my hanging baskets. Then when the work day ends, I can focus on the important things like my family instead of rushing around and trying to pack so much into such a short amount of time. 

My hanging baskets survived. Not because I have suddenly sprouted a green thumb and been transformed into a gardener extraordinaire. They survived because I paid attention to them. I poured into them. I had time for them. And it’s a good reminder to apply that same care to myself. 

There are so many lessons to be gleaned from the challenges 2020 has thrown at us. Before all of this started, I was always in a rush, thinking about where I needed to be and what I needed to be doing next. The silver lining to 2020 is that I’ve slowed down. I have a greater appreciation for the little things like visits with friends, a night at the ballpark, hugs from my parents. So while there are some things I am eager to get back to when this is all over, there are other things I won’t be so quick to resume. But the one thing I will be sure to do is take time to stop and smell the hanging baskets.