Love in the Time of Corona

Love is patient; love is kind... but all the togetherness of social isolation has some of us losing our minds. So let me give you a picture of what love can look like when you're trapped with your spouse in a small space for weeks on end:

• Love tracks the shipping on your spouse's coffee order to make sure she doesn't run out at an inopportune moment when she really needs said coffee to get through those last few weeks of homeschooling.
• Love brings home Clorox wipes.
• Alternately, love shares what's left of the bleach with the squadron in an attempt to keep germs from decimating base security, so it's really lucky that he was able to bring Clorox wipes home.
• Love washes hands, washes hands, and washes hands again. And then puts lotion on them because those suckers are dry now.
• Love prioritizes a last minute slap-dash dinner and fitting in a family walk before bed over sticking to the original plan that involved actual adult cooking. This is how sanity is maintained.
• Love uncomplainingly helps you drain the kiddie pool for the fifth day in a row even though said kiddie pool really put the nail in your new identity as trailer trash.
• Love fully supports the purchase of a pair of noise cancelling headphones for telework days because five kids socially isolated in an RV are loud and ain't nobody you're conference calling want to hear that.
• Love trades off who goes grocery shopping so that we both get to take the risk of infection in addition to the reward of getting out of the RV and away from the kids.
• Love orders a surprise lunch for your trapped at home wife so she at least gets to see the delivery driver and eat her feelings in Massaman curry.
• Love brings home Cadbury caramel eggs and a pair of clippers so that military hair can stay in regs even while certain seasonal cravings are being indulged.
• Love takes the whole family on long drives looking for deer so everyone gets a break from the RV for a while and the dog reaches maximum fulfillment.
• Love doesn't mind texting each other from the next room so that whoever is currently getting a break from the kids can enjoy that break to the best of their ability.
• Love celebrates with you when you finally find a bag of Jasmine rice at the grocery store and your inner Asian can stop panicking about running out of rice.
• Love brings home Ben&Jerry's and doesn't even ask to share.

Love shaved off that mustache so I didn't have to look at it all the time.

Right now, love is not extravagant date nights (or even fitting in a quick date lunch). Love is not encouraging girls' nights out or time at the gym. Love is not even long conversations about how your day went (since most days are being spent together). At present, you may feel like your love for each other could use a little space to breathe, but the truth is that what it may need is actually a little creativity. So, while we're all trapped in a glass cage of emotion and the enclosed spaces of our homes, may we think outside the box a little when it comes to our love life and consider how we can creatively show love for each other as well as being on the lookout for the small ways our spouses are already showing love to us that we may not have noticed.