The Comeback

Ok, here’s the deal.

I’ve been gone for years. I know it. If anyone else reads this on the regular, you know it. Or maybe you have notifications set up and this is suddenly appearing in your email inbox and you’re thinking

“Who the hell is this and when did I sign up for this?”

The answer to the first question is complicated, because I can’t say for sure who the hell I am on a good day. The answer to the second question is “sometime before March 2020.”

I know this, because that’s the last time I wrote. Every time I sat down to write after that, things just felt….weird.

There was nothing I could possibly say to make sense of the fact that one day, hockey parents went from a busy, insane schedule to absolutely nothing on the calendar. And the sport that their kids had enjoyed was suddenly gone. With no return to hockey anywhere on the horizon.

Along with school, and friends and any semblance of normalcy.

If you were in Ontario at the time, that date was March 13, 2020. A Friday the 13th, oddly enough. I mean, technically speaking, my calendar went from full to empty in about two hours time on the night of the 12th, but the 13th was the first day of a new normal that would last for months.

And the new normal was absolutely chaotic.

Most people don’t thrive in chaos. I certainly didn’t. After waking up in the midst of two separate panic attacks in two separate weeks, it was obvious that what I was doing wasn’t working.

So words were hard to come by. I couldn’t explain it to myself. The best I could do was survive. I think most of us felt that way.

It became clear that I needed quiet. In a house full of stir crazy boys, quiet was not to be achieved during their waking hours. This led to me getting out of bed at 5:00am. I did nothing but drink my first cup of tea in peace and quiet. And I watched Friends on repeat. Sometimes I read my books. Actually, a lot of time I read my books. According to Goodreads, I read a lot of books in March and April 2020.

The deal I made with myself was that whatever brought us comfort in those early months of upheaval would be worth the cost. We bought a lot of ice cream. I ordered books. When it became clear that virtual school was sticking around for a while, we acquired Chromebooks.

And we were very fortunate that we could approach things this way. Not everyone could. And complaining about anything just felt wrong.

So I said nothing.

I have no idea when things were officially back to pre-pandemic. Our local association worked really hard to balance the return to hockey with the restrictions that were in place (and almost constantly changing).

I honestly believe most of us are still a little burnt out.

At some point, normal happened, because I’m sitting here trying to think about what is different now and the only thing I have is that I’m still working from home. That won’t last forever, but for now, I have the luxury.

This hockey season has been the most normal we’ve had since 2019. The return to hockey in 2021-2022 was rocky, but there were ice times. All three boys are still playing. Boy #2 is still a goalie. I’m still in the stands.

The only new thing, really, is that as of the 2021-2022 season, I am a board member for our hockey association.

This may not be a good thing for the board as a whole, but they’re stuck with me now.

That brings us up to date. It’s nice to be back.

What have you all been up to?

See you at the rink.