Suspended time. Different time. Empty time. New time. Time, regardless. These weeks of #StayingHome ask for time, attention, patience. At first, some chafed. Others huffed. A few didn't take it seriously. Then something like common sense settled over everyone.
#StayingHome wins.
#StayingHome makes us more compassionate. Perhaps more equal.
For many, this is new: sharing space, working together, creating, moving slowly, respecting boundaries, waiting. Also: boredom and loneliness. For others, it's an expansion of the ordinary. Maybe those who live with disability have been training for this all along. Trained in patience, in slowness, in collaboration, in solitude—in a different sense of time from the very beginning of their disability journey. To believe that "everything will be okay" in a story of disability, you need your own definition of "okay." It doesn't fit a template. It's about the person realizing themselves—beyond their legs, their eyes, their brain, their disability. And getting there takes biblical stretches of patience, attention, collaboration, creativity, effort, pain, and solitude.
#StayingHome with my disabled daughter means inventing and resetting everyday life once more. This time for everyone's sake. It means explaining in simple, clear words why the Center is closed, why the pool is closed, why music lessons and church have stopped. Why she can't see her Tuesday friend. Why there's no weekend with her usual friends. It means helping her understand she won't see her sister, her niece, her cousins, the people she loves. Then offering something better: we stay home together. We play music. We listen to music. We make up stories and record them with no schedules, no deadlines. I hold serenity in one hand and pizza dough in the other, breathing in the smell from the oven. We snack on the balcony like we're on vacation. We join the FlashMob from the terrace, keyboard in hand. We wait for phone calls. We send voice messages on WhatsApp. We fill slow time with small, appetizing moments of anticipation—all while keeping steady and drawing from a well of patience I hope never runs dry. And then I celebrate her effort, her awareness, her surprising gift for responding with grace to the unexpected.
#StayingHome—really, we're staying home with our disabled daughter. Because once again, this adventure is shared. We live it together. We sustain it in tandem. True, we've trained for this. True, we trust that this suspended, strange, different time might also be a gift—for all of us—to go to the heart of what matters: values, relationships, the chance to live differently.
#StayingHome, this time like everyone else.
