Lockdown And The Unexpected Sign From My Son

In our dining room, a letterboard sign hangs by two wooden thumb tacks because I was too indecisive to get out a hammer and put holes in my fresh black walls.

The letterboard was supposed to be something we used. We were supposed to put new words on it based on the holiday or the occasion but, a couple of years ago, we were doing a lot of traveling. Sometimes it was my husband who needed to go out of town. Then, I left to photograph a destination wedding. Finally, the entire family was traveling for Thanksgiving together. When we returned from our trip, our five-year old son asked to put something on the letterboard. The way it reads now is the way he finished it then.  

“We’re home now. I love you forever!”

I read his message and instantly loved it so much that I never wanted it to change.

Years later, the pandemic hit. Precautions, as we’ve never witnessed before, were suddenly real and straight out of a novel. The kids never returned back to school from spring break. Toilet paper and some food items were nowhere to be found and a panic was settling inside me about what it all meant.

The dining room was my new office as I could sit my son next to me and do schoolwork with him. It was there that I would do things like order fabric to make our own facemasks, look up recipes, try new ways to order groceries online, stay in touch with people, and read the news without the kids looking over my shoulder. It was my coronavirus workhub and the place where I’d sit and worry when it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks that nothing made sense anymore.

One day, I was having an internal meltdown when ordering my groceries from three different places just to get the things we needed. It was then that I looked up from my screen and saw the sign. There it was, a message to my anxious heart. It gave me pause and a goofy, possibly teary smile on my face. I could picture the little boy so happy to write something on the letterboard. I remembered the feeling after traveling in which it felt so good to be home. I held onto all of that tightly in my heart. We were home now, afterall. It didn’t matter that the circumstances were scary; I could hold onto the fact that we were home.

Still now, when there’s so much uncertainty scrolling down the feed of disappointing and almost suffocating news, I look up. That little five year old child of mine gave me the sign that I never knew I’d need to help me feel steady during the craziness that is 2020.

I’m grateful to be home. There’s love here forever. And forever is more than enough.