Quarantine: a blessing not a punishment

The coronavirus may have caused us all a significant stress. We are all locked inside our houses, we can’t go to work, and kids are always home, which can make it even more stressful for parents who are working from home. Some people think it is God’s punishment for what we are doing in the world, but for me, it turned out to be more of a blessing.

You may look at it as a tedious phase that you can’t wait till it is over, but in fact, this can be a golden chance to reconnect with yourself, spouse, and kids.

In regular daily life, we all get consumed in our job’s routine. You probably wake up, have breakfast, then head to work, and kids go to school. Then you come back, have dinner, maybe watch something then go to bed. You know you should keep the windmill going because you are the one who puts bread on the table, or you want to be successful in your career. As compensation, it takes away from spending quality time with the family and yourself.

Let me go back in time and describe my life before the quarantine.

I am a graduate student currently working on my professional project to graduate in May 2020. My husband is an engineer and works from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and we have a 3-year-old boy and expecting a baby girl on the way.

It is not easy to balance between being a mother and being anything else. I wake up early to drop my son to daycare, then drive two hours back and forth to my university, and I come back home to prepare dinner for my family, wash the dishes and spend some time working on my project. I almost have zero time to do anything for myself. I am not the only one. There is around seventy percent of working mothers with children under 18 in the United States of America, the U.S. Department of Labor Blog noted.

My husband is not less involved. He wakes up early to go to work and picks up our son on the way home. He spends the rest of the time with our son until I am done with all the housework, then we can sit together as a family at dinner and maybe have a warm drink after. We finally all sink into bed between 9 to 10 p.m. and repeat the same routine every day except for the weekends where we can finally breathe and sit together for a longer time.

I know my husband is working very hard for us, and he knows I am doing the same. Still, we never got the chance to watch what we are actually doing and appreciate it.

Quarantine made us see it closely by watching what we do when we are not at home.

I saw him working on his projects, designing machines, fixing issues, and jumping from one virtual meeting to another.

He saw me helping our son to enter the restroom, preparing breakfast, and keeping him busy with games and activities until it is his nap time. By the time I put him to sleep-usually takes a long time because he fights to sleep- I fix myself a cup of coffee and work on my project for a bit till he is back up. Then I resume playing with him with one hand and trying to cook dinner with the other.

After the first week, my husband came to me. He said, “Starting today, we are going to have some rules, you must have at least three hours a day for yourself during the weekdays and seven to eight hours during the weekend.”

“You are not allowed to do anything for us during this time, it is YOUR time that you can use however you like,” he said.

I was surprised by what he said because I never complained. I never even realized that I was tired and needed time for myself. We decided to change our routine so we can spend more time together and also give time to ourselves. My husband still works from home, and I still work on my project, but we arranged the day differently so we can get the best out of the day and every day. The three of us appreciate this time more than ever. My son get to play more with both of us, my husband and I get to spend more time with each other and at the same time we recharge our energy by having sometime for ourselves.

There are many families who need to take advantage of this time.

Before we get into the work loop again, quarantine is now giving us the chance to rebuild our connections with our loved ones.