I hate this expression but it truly sums up how I feel. I am exhausted, burned out and ready for this to be OVER and done with. It’s been 11 months of no travel and in my role as Chief Marketing Officer for a travel company, it’s been 11 months of “pivoting” and reforecasting and staying hopeful and optimistic as we swing through ups and downs by state, by country, by border.
And yet, I am one of the very lucky ones. I live in a beautiful place with access to the outdoors right from my front door. Our home is large enough to welcome back my adult children and still have space for everyone to work remotely and live comfortably. We have a small but well equipped home gym that keeps us active on the days when the weather isn’t ideal outside. And we have access to entertainment with numerous channels and streaming sites.
So I practice gratitude for the little things. The joy of having my children at the dinner table every night. The joy of taking a walk together. The joy of playing a fun game together. In short, the joy of being together in the same house for more than a week which hasn’t happened since they graduated from high school, over a decade ago. Some onlookers are highly critical of me for being so happy to have my grown children at home. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this is a very “American” view. I grew up in Europe where adult children rarely leave home until they get married. Multi-gen households are the norm, not the exception. And while I don’t expect my son or daughter to stay here for an extended period, I will not ever be ashamed to have my children home, no matter how old they are. It is a gift that I will treasure as I know, like life itself, this moment of all four of us being together is very short.
I will share that it’s not all roses and daffodils. We have big personalities. We don’t agree on many things, but there is love and respect and learning patience, “the pause”, not to take things personally, and to enjoy the diversity of thought that is so engaging for me. I think about my mother all the time, how she used to call me a card carrying communist with my liberal views when I was in my 20’s, a stereotypical Berkeley grad of the 70’s. Of course, with age my views have changed quite a bit. I call myself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. And now it’s my turn to listen to my children talk about the world, share their political views, their view of what’s important and the future of the planet. And I find it fascinating and stimulating. How they find their information, how they communicate with their peers, how they use the internet with so much agility and far more depth than I have mastered. It’s just such a gift to learn from them.
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