Quarantine chat

Once again, like one of my most recent posts, I am going to be switching gears and write about the word-wide pandemic we’re in right now.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready to get out of my house and get life back to normal. And my family is also ready. I decided to ask my mother a few questions about her thoughts on the current situation we’re in now.

My mother is currently doing stuff around the house to keep busy. She’s cleaning and keeping the house as close to normal to keep everyone from getting stressed out. She is also giving a lot of thought into planning meals with ingredients we already have so she can limit the amount of times we have to leave to go into the grocery store. Housework isn’t the only thing she does. She’s been knitting and doing puzzles to also help keep her busy.

Almost all of my immediate family is hunkering down at home together. My oldest sister is at her apartment. The presence of my father, sisters, and myself is what is helping my mother cope throughout this pandemic. Our three cats are also helping and providing entertainment for everyone here.

The cats are one thing that still feels normal in my mothers life. Her daily routine of feeding them hasn’t changed a bit. However, the lesser fun task of laundry hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s increased with everyone home. I guess there are some annoying tasks that even a world-wide pandemic can’t stop…

When I asked her about what doesn’t feel normal, my mother replied with “the world seems like a much scarier place”. I’m sure we can all relate to her when she said that and I also think we can all agree with her that the news has become scary too. As said in previous posts, my sisters and I are usually very busy. With this quarantine, we are all home and this, even though it’s nice, is another thing that feels unnormal to my mother.

My mother has never been through anything like this. She told me “The closest thing I have experienced to this has been working in an isolation ward at a hospital. This is way different because I can’t just clock out and go home to my normal life. This is totally worldwide and it feels like there’s no escape.” It seems crazy to me that our everyday life now reminds my mother at her time working in the hospital. I myself didn’t think it would get this bad.

The last question I asked my mother made her sort of try to predict the future. I asked her if she thinks that everything will go back to normal and what kind of things she believes she will change. She told me that she doesn’t believe that everything will go completely back to normal. She believes that after this is all over, people will forever be more cautious. Every aspect of our lives will be different, from going out to eat to just general socialization. People won’t take for granted the safe life we used to have. She also believes that people will loose a bit of trust and innocence from this pandemic. People won’t feel as safe with small gestures, such as a simple handshake.

I hope all of my readers are being safe. This is all for this post. Remember, stay inside and just be patient. This, like all other bad things, will too pass ! 🙂

A Family Tradition

My family doesn’t have a ton of traditions we really follow. Sure, every year we are the ones to host holiday gatherings, but other than that, we don’t really have many things we always do year after year.

There is one exception though. My family always takes a Christmas picture every year, even though not everyone still lives at home.

I have four older sisters and we are all busy with work and our fast paced lives. It’s not often when all of us are home at the same time especially seeing as though my oldest sister is living on her own. Even with our busy schedules, we always find a time to come together and take a Christmas picture to send out to friends and family.

Taking this picture may not seem like a lot to us, but to my mother, it means a lot.

Just recently, my mother put together a family photo album of just our Christmas pictures. As I was looking at it, I could then tell why this holiday tradition means so much to her.

I was looking over the pictures and it was very interesting to see how my sisters and I changed year to year. This photo album showed us growing up. It’s a kind of sentimental feeling that is hard to describe.

Here are just some of my families Christmas pictures throughout the years. Unfortunately, due to the recent crash of my parents laptop, we have lost some of our original files to the photos so I had to result to taking pictures of the pictures.

I encourage everyone, once you’re all settled down whether, you have a significant other, a family, or just with friends, to try and start this tradition. It can take as little as five minutes to shoot a photo. I promise that after a few years of taking a Christmas picture, you will be able to share the same sentimental feeling as I do.