How the Pandemic Helped Me Reconnect

My life is about work. Always has been and always will be until I can’t any longer. Work to me has brought me challenges, accomplishments and creativity. Several years ago because of a major IT project I was working on, I had to let go of the idea I could do it all and hired a housekeeper.

Abiding by the stay safe at home directive in California, I did not want to compromise the health of someone else if I was asymptomatic and vice versa. I asked the housekeeper not to come back until this life pause is restarted.

I could only put my cleaning on hold for so long and I attacked the bathrooms first. I literally attacked. Attack is the only word I can use to describe it accurately.

When the bathrooms were done, I then looked at the floors and thought that maybe they were the next to clean. My next thought was “They’re floors. Why bother?” I decided not to look down when I walk.

A few days later I found I just could not focus on work. I needed a simple task and doing one was all I could handle. I decided to dust.

As I dusted, it gave me something to make physical contact with. If I can't touch the people I love, I can touch the things they gave me.

The act of dusting put me in contact with each person who gave me the object. As I held the gift they gave me, I lovingly thought of them, the celebratory occasion, and the love associated with both.

The dusting also had me connect with all the objects I acquired throughout my travels. I connected with the statue of a mother and her child I received in South Africa. I cleaned off the photo I bought from a photography student in Thailand of two little girls playing. I washed the ocean blue glass sailboat I acquired in Greece.

I blessed each of these objects. I blessed the people who gave them to me. I blessed the places I’ve been able to experience. I blessed them one by one. It gave me peace.

Yes, these are challenging times, but these times have helped me find an unexpected and precious gift of reconnecting with the people and places I love.

What is a gift these times have given you?