Amanda Lamb: Missing piece
The pandemic has created a forced togetherness for families that allowed us to spend time with our older children that will likely never be duplicated in our lifetime.
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My routine when she leaves is pretty standard—I pass her empty room a few times and realize that there are no knees making a tent out of her comforter as she sits in bed consuming Netflix. Instead, the comforter is flat, neatly spread across the bed.
I sometimes stop for a moment and linger, even sitting on the end of the bed for a moment to reflect on her visit home. If I close my eyes, I can imagine her in this very room, asking me as a teenager what I wanted and asking me to leave her alone. But now, our visits are much different. When I sit on the edge of her bed, we talk about what to make for dinner or what movie we might watch together that night.
One thing I will not accept going forward is sacrificing time with my children for other priorities. Wherever they go, I will be there, visiting them, supporting them, spending time with them, fitting into their lives as best I can and remembering how after years of being a family, we finally found each other in 2020.
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