Written by Volunteer Coordinator, Aubrey Sizemore.
Hello, from my dining room table! This worldwide pandemic has presented a new experience for everyone in the country. My family and I, just like everyone else, are doing the best we can and taking things day by day. I’d like to share with you what my family and I have been up to.
Aside from working at the Art league of Ocean City, I have a boyfriend that is a hotel manager and president of the Hotel, Motel, Restaurant Association. We live in Ocean Pines and typically, I’m an extremely busy mom of two boys. My daily duties include but are not limited to packing school lunches, sudden projects due, spur of the moment snacks needed that day for school, helping with homework, driving to and from soccer practices, drum lessons, pottery classes at the Art League and hopefully getting home in the evenings with enough time to fix a well-balanced meal, get the kids showered and in bed at a decent hour. Staying active and busy is what we love to do.
Now we are all four at home, stopped in our tracks, practicing “social distancing”. School is cancelled, work is cancelled, sports are cancelled. My first reaction was to clean. I cleaned out every closet in our house and in the kitchen. Then cleaned the house top to bottom. I’ve also made the kids clean their rooms which was a huge task. While cleaning out closets, I came across old games, Legos and toys my boys said they no longer liked but I couldn’t let go of yet. Thank goodness for that! We’ve reconnected with some of our old favorites like chutes and ladders, Yahtzee, Uno and many more. We’ve had drawing contests, made crafts, many music concerts and have played outside as much as possible. My oldest son has even mastered solving the Rubix cube.
All these activities have kept us busy but our favorite thing that we’ve done is with cardboard boxes. We took six huge Home Depot boxes and pieced them together to create a fort in the woods. Or is it a spaceship? One day it was an escape room. We’ve been to the moon and back in one afternoon and have been locked in a library with 10 minutes to find all the clues we needed to get the code to the lock to escape through the trapped door. Each day we’ve been on a different adventure without leaving the house. Making lemonade with lemons, I call it. When my boys were small, at Christmas the boxes were often more exciting than the actual gift. These times have brought back the small kid in all of us!
Keeping my sons’ minds off what’s going on in the world around them has been my main goal. It has helped me stay happy as well. We’re doing our part by staying inside but our minds and imaginations are anywhere we want to take them that day. Art isn’t just painting; it’s being creative and thinking outside of the box.
I know I’m not alone when I say I cannot wait for the dust to settle and we’re able to gather in large groups, shake hands with strangers, kiss our kids, sit down at a restaurant to have a meal, and get back to work and school. Until then, let’s keep using art and creativity to help keep us and our families going.