As a child I had a little red tricycle. I loved it. I rode around and around the cup-de-sac on the hilltop where I lived. I tried as hard as I could to keep up with the bigger kids, all on bicycles, but I never could. I remember yelling to them, “Stop. Let me catch up.”

It was a phrase I have murmured many times throughout my life. Times when school assignments were coming at me like darts. When my children were growing in number and stature, seemingly right before my eyes. When so many of life’s demands had my attention. When the accumulation of things and people and commitments and jobs simply overwhelmed me.

“Stop! Let me catch up!”

And now, as I sit in my still kitchen, the world has stopped for the most part. Businesses are shuttered. Schools are closed. Restaurants are still. Only hospitals and groceries are bustling.

A pandemic that has caused the world to stop.

Part of me relishes the moment. My 401K does not, but as an optimist, I count on the future. For this moment, I am savoring the stillness, the slower pace, and—dare I say it—the time to catch up.

For the past few months, I have not been idle. I have pursued a project that the have wanted to attack for years. This project, a history of my extensive family, has loitered in countless boxes and documents and photographs piled in my office, waiting for me to find time to get to them.

And now I have.

I’m sure that when this pandemic is all over, when the costs are counted, when the world’s economy starts churning again, I’ll resume a more harried life—shall I say, “a normal life.”

But for the moment I am savoring the time to catch up, savoring the time that I have longed for all my life. Time to catch up.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay