It’s January 19, 2021. Our family has now been in quarantine or some variation of it for ten months.  We have been very limited in what we do, people we see and where we go. Yet, despite these limitations and disappointments, we have learned many lessons during the Pandemic.

As with many families, several milestones have taken place during this time too. We have all had some sort of disappointment along the way.  Like many, it has been our girls who have suffered the most.

The second weekend in March should have been a celebration for our family as it marked our middle daughter’s 16th birthday as well as the beginning of Spring Break for all three girls.  Instead of celebrating Rylee and planning our trip to NYC at the end of that week before returning Haylie to college, it marked the first weekend of the shutdown in our state. 

Sweet Sixteen In Lockdown

The Thursday before lockdown, I forced the three girls to go to Costco with me.  The lines were incredibly long.  No one was happy to be there and the fear was pretty obvious on most people’s faces.  I had the girls come with me so that we had food that would make everyone happy.  I really didn’t want to hear the usual complaints of “we have no food”.  Fortunately, I made sure to get a birthday cake for Rylee while we were there, knowing that we likely wouldn’t be able to get one otherwise for her birthday that Sunday.

Because her Sweet Sixteen came at the beginning of lockdown, it was before people started to get inventive with drive-by celebrations and the like.  In order to make it somewhat special for her, we allowed one of her best friend’s to spend the day and eat dinner with us. (They had been together leading up to the shutdown so we felt it was okay, at that time, to allow her in our home.)  What should have been a day of big celebration became a quiet, uneventful day filled, in some ways, with fear.  This same child has an interest in playing field hockey in college but with summer recruiting camps cancelled as well as her school’s fall season and her club team’s winter indoor season, we don’t know what will happen. 

She is also a gymnast who had the remainder of her 2019-2020 season cancelled and practices, at least for a time, shifted to being done over Zoom.  When the gym reopened, she decided that she wasn’t ready to take the risk in returning and continued to practice via Zoom.  In October, she made the decision to return, knowing that the season was going to consist of Zoom meets.  She also decided not to move up to the next level as she had intended, because she had missed seven months of practice.  Then in November, there was a positive case or two at the gym and she decided that she did not want to risk being able to attend school (which is in a hybrid model) so she again went back to Zoom only practices.  She has now been back at in-person practices for a week. 

The Return Home From College

As I’ve written about before, my oldest daughter’s freshman year of college was abruptly cut short as she and the rest of her university were sent home the week before their scheduled Spring Break, to finish the semester online.  Her summer job at a sleepover camp in upstate New York was cancelled and she spent much of the summer trying to survive being unable to make money or move about freely. 

Haylie’s sophomore year has been anything but normal too – living on campus but not really able to do much socially with a mix between online and in person classes.  She was randomly tested throughout her first semester and that will continue as well.  Spring Break this year was cancelled. Unless we go to visit her, we won’t see her until the semester ends because there is no opportunity to come home and the university doesn’t want the kids leaving.

My husband got a new job in August.  He has yet to go to his office or meet his new colleagues in person.  It’s been a strange start to new employment but, fortunately, he has transitioned very well!

Reimagining Lifecycle Events

Perhaps the biggest milestone that has taken place for our family is my youngest daughter’s bat mitzvah, a Jewish lifecycle event where a girl, usually aged 12 or 13, is called to the Torah. (The equivalent for boys is the Bar Mitzvah.)  The significance of the bat mitzvah is that in the eyes of Jewish law, the teen is now considered an adult Jew.  They are supposed to take on duties and obligations of an adult in the religion.  In many ways, in today’s society, it is symbolic.  

Generally, the girl is called to the Torah during the Sabbath service on Saturday morning (known as Shabbat).  She will chant the weekly portion from the Torah in front of the synagogue’s congregation as well as her friends and family, among other things.  Following the service, there is usually a celebration of some kind.  In many cases, they are big parties with a DJ or band, a theme, a sit down dinner, etc.

Callie has talked about her bat mitzvah and the celebration after it for over four years.  She and her best friend used to dress up and pretend that they were attending the parties. (Both girls have older siblings who had gone through the bar/bat mitzvah circuit so they were familiar with what to expect.)

Since she was 9 years old, Callie knew the theme of her celebration (Winter Wonderland), including the colors (Cinderella blue, silver, and white).  She never waivered.  While looking for party venues, she fell in love with a hotel that had a grand staircase and she envisioned the pictures we would take.  It happened to be the same place where I had my party (nearly 35 years ago)!  We both loved the idea of tradition and were excited for what was to come.

In January 2020, about a year before the date of her bat mitzvah, Callie began studying for the service.  She met with her tutor twice a week and practiced at home.  She was excited: the day that she had been waiting for was finally approaching.  She was ready to put in the work to shine on such an important day.

Then the COVID-19 Pandemic hit.  School went virtual. Her meetings with her bat mitzvah tutor were done by old-fashioned telephone.  Her friends started having their bar/bat mitzvahs on Zoom or via livestream.  Many postponed their services, some just the parties.  The celebrations she thought that she’d be going to never happened.  

And, for Callie, the planning for her own party got put on hold.  

Because everything was rapidly changing, over the next 7 months, we had no idea what we would be able to do.  We weren’t even sure if we would be allowed IN the synagogue for the service or if Callie would be doing her service from our house via Zoom.  

By October, we knew the party we planned on having was not going to be able to happen.  The restrictions in our area were pretty tight (and remain so).  Even more important was the fact that Callie’s school instituted very strict Community Guidelines that would have required quarantine for 14 days for anyone who attended. 

By Thanksgiving, we knew that unless something changed drastically, we would be able to be in the synagogue for the service.  We were allowed to have my immediate family and that was it.  This was something that was really important to me, and to Callie, because she is the 5th generation of my family to have lifecycle events take place at our synagogue as my great-grandparents (Callie’s great-great-grandparents) were founding members.  While we knew the service wouldn’t look like anything like what her sisters had experienced, we knew that Callie would rise to the occasion and shine.

But we still wanted to find a way to celebrate her with her closest friends. When we made the decision in October to cancel the party as planned (admittedly, at that point we expected we would cancel so not much actual planning had taken place), we had considered doing a small, intimate lunch at a restaurant.  The irony in this was that our family had not eaten in a restaurant since the beginning of the pandemic; looking back, even if done safely, I am not sure how we were even considering doing so.

Around Thanksgiving, the reality set in that we needed to figure something out.  We needed to find a way to let Callie know that her hard work would not go unnoticed.  As the youngest of three girls, she would repeatedly say that she was afraid that she would “get the short end of the stick” when it came to her bat mitzvah party.  Unfortunately, she was right but not because of our planning.  Thank you, COVID-19!

While Callie realized, and understood, that it was not our doing, it didn’t make her feel better.  Along with being in and out of school, not seeing friends, and generally being bored, COVID was bringing her another hit.  Like many young people during 2020, her anxiety and depression began to increase.  Instead of the impending day being special, it started to cause her sadness.  Yes, she still practiced hard, but the reality that it wasn’t going to be what she had wanted, really began to set in.  She became more irritable and unhappy.

When we went shopping to find a dress for her service, we discovered a really big problem.  No one was selling dresses!  You could find athletic clothes and athleisure wear galore.  Business separates (mostly tops).  But dresses of any kind were pretty much nonexistent, especially one appropriate for a 13 year old girl.  (The reality is that no one was wearing – or buying – dresses so stores were not stocking them.) We ended up buying two dresses, neither of which we liked nor were special enough for the day.  On the car ride home, I asked Callie to humor me and try on the dress Rylee had worn for her service 4 years earlier.  She agreed.

When we got home, she tried the two new dresses on for her father and sisters.  Rylee then gave her the dress she wore.  When she came into the room, to show us, her face lit up, as did mine.  She looked beautiful, and different than Rylee did.  We both agreed that she would wear Rylee’s dress.  I think we both liked the history of the dress as well.  And it was gorgeous!

Now that we had figured out the dress for the service, Callie expressed her sadness over not being able to get the party dress she had been looking forward to forever.

Part of her dream of the day and party was finding THE special dress.  I suggested we buy her a dress so she can have professional photos taken in it.  We went to the dress store where we had purchased Rylee’s dress four years earlier.  We pulled out all of the shorter Cinderella blue dresses they had.  Which was maybe 5 dresses.  She tried on the first few.  One looked cute, the others not so much.  Then, she tried on the last dress.  It was off the shoulder, with a sweetheart neckline.  The right shade of blue with sparkling silver design throughout.  

Callie put it on and we both just KNEW that this was the dress.

It was also the first time that I really became sad at what she was NOT going to have.  Because, despite what she thought, I had this unbelievable image in my head of what the party was going to look like.  And THIS dress would have been the perfect dress for what she and I had in mind.  My heart ached for her.

It also made me more determined to make sure that that day was memorable.  My husband and I set about to figure out how.  We decided to rent an open tent and set up time blocks, with limitations of people who could sign up for each time block (staying within the CDC, state and school guidelines).  We limited the number of people invited.  Hired a hot cocoa truck and a food truck for food.  We made s’mores kits and borrowed a neighbor’s fire pit and heater. We had sweatshirts made for her friends who were attending. 

 

Stellar Cookies supplied the cookies.

My husband did an amazing job hanging lights and arranging with vendors the day before.  Our front yard looked amazing.  Callie was ecstatic and was happy with some of the surprises that we had not told her about.

Not everyone came who was invited, which we had expected.  We are okay with that.  We knew that while we were taking all precautions to make the celebration for Callie COVID-Safe, not everyone would be comfortable coming.  We understood.  Callie understood.

Even though we missed celebrating with everyone who would have been at the big party, there was something memorable and special about having the people closest to Callie in attendance.  The pressure was off.  She got to spend time with her friends that she hadn’t really seen or spent time with in a long time.  The girls were able to simply hang out, giggle and have fun.

Haylie, my oldest, even commented that she enjoyed it better than he party six years ago.

For our family it was a fantastic lesson in flexibility and simplicity.  So when the time comes, when we are able to go back to living some sense of normalcy, I hope that all five of us are able to remember the lessons we have learned during this strange time:

Sometimes the best things are the things that don’t go as planned.