Reflections on Stolen Moments

Basement ping pong got the wiggles out in early-COVID after colleges sent kids home; over the last month the table transformed into a messy sewing station for our middle child. 

On Labor Day, as our oldest goes ‘back’ to his off-campus remote college, I stare at that table and think of stolen moments from our kids’ independence over the last six months. What objects of new-found meaning have my colleagues and our partners uncovered over the half-year, in various stages of their own lives and families?

My husband and middle son turned up the music, talked, teased, and laughed as the ball bounced casually back-and-forth across the table throughout the rainy Spring, hoping to hold on through a few months of pandemic. Then our oldest returned and we shifted to fierce ping-pong battles and added other family games as we sighed at the longer COVID horizon.

Mid-summer a niece built her own ping pong table (called “Pong” at her college), to recreate some sense of what she’d lost, and painted on it a local nature scene to remind her of what she’d gained. We gathered round, in our brave extended family visit, and appreciated non-screen time together, while respecting the magnitude of the pandemic’s destruction.

Sometimes I feel like I’m living 100 years ago, in my shrunken world with a ping pong table at its center, though juxtaposed by our technology era which enabled me to start a new job and get to know my new team during the pandemic without actually meeting anyone. It’s bittersweet to see a child return to college, in some ways, more so than a usual college send-off, as I imagine this extended time home for college kids is an unexpected yet welcomed result of a once in a century pandemic and may be the last time I have all three kids home for the summer. How has it brought your family closer?