If any good is to come of this pandemic, it’s that it has brought us all together. For our family of three, staying at home has been a bonus gift of time. Our son came home for spring break from Yale University and was told to finish his semester online. Though he was disappointed that he could not go back to campus, he has thoroughly enjoyed using (and teaching me) online platforms like Zoom and FaceTime to stay connected with friends and family. As for my husband and I, we are so delighted to have him home. We get to spend quality time as a family together again. Part of me feels like we’ve entered a time warp of joy into the past. Every day, we take our three dogs (Conner, Cody and Daisy, two Aussies and a sweet rescue mutt, respectively) for a walk and ride our bicycles around the neighborhood. We have family dinners nightly and are now beginning to have outdoor movie nights in the backyard. We are even starting to use our pool again! It reminds me of how we spent time together as a family in my son’s early years.
Our biggest challenge is living in the moment. It is easy to start to worry and panic about what may or may not happen next week, next month, next year, and this is definitely very hard. But we are just trying to focus on staying positive and being in the present. We are healthy, we are together and we take comfort in the fact that we can do our part to help others in many ways: a check-in phone call to those alone, picking up extra items for those at a higher risk of leaving their homes and buying gift certificates from local businesses to use in the future are all little things that we can do every day to make a difference.
I love our community. As part of the Toluca Lake Garden Club and Toluca Lake Beautification Partners, I have been blessed to meet so many of my neighbors. One of the positives about this crazy time is that during these last two months our neighborhood has been in full bloom: families out with their children and their dogs, tending to their beautiful gardens, sitting on their front porches and greeting passers-by. There’s something so neighborly and magical about it to me. It feels like a flashback to what Toluca Lake may have been like in the ’50s, and I love it! In a strange way, I feel like our community has never been closer (while staying six feet apart).
My messages to my neighbors are “Choose happiness” and “Bloom where you’re planted.”
Return to The State of the Village.