“Huh, I would have thought there would be fewer shadows this time of day,” I thought to myself as I ran through our neighborhood. I was running at noon, comparing it to when I often run at 2 or 3 PM. I dodged the hot sun by ducking under a tree overhanging the sidewalk.

I’ve been running this same route almost every other day since COVID-19 started. Before that, I’d been running it on Sunday afternoons, but never so often and not at different times of the day. Having it as my only chance to venture off of our property for a solid three months attuned me to the tiny changes from day to day.

I’m not usually this way. I crave novelty. I do different things every weekend, hardly ever read the same book twice, and am constantly on the move. Being stuck in the house all day feels more like a cage than coziness. The line in Hamilton about never being satisfied struck me like truth with a capital T. So at first, COVID shutting everything down was terrifying.

But I found sanity by finding novelty within small changes. The shifting of the shadows on my run, the growth of dandelions in the yard, the movement of the clouds in the sky before a storm. Each a slight shift was a new variation on a theme, beautiful in their own way.

And of course, I witnessed the small changes in my children. My older son’s penchant for coming up with his own original jokes that are getting gradually funnier and funnier. My younger son’s shift from pretending to be various baby animals to various Dungeons and Dragons monsters. (You’ve never heard of a baby Death Knight? Shame.) Both of their vocabularies getting bigger and more complex. Both of them being more able to resolve arguments with words – and when they don’t, my younger son at least being bigger and less likely to get hurt. As stressful as working from home is (and we are exceptionally lucky in that my husband is a full-time stay-at-home dad), it’s been amazing to have all of this time with them. No longer is my weekday free time with them squished into 45 minutes at best. It’s allowed me to take in these little spots of growth that build up so much over time.

I hope when all of this is over, I can maintain this newfound satisfaction. This ability to not just slow down, but embrace the new pace. To find fulfillment in the shifting of shadows and the small pleasures with my children. While I had some appreciation for those things before, the fact that it’s all we have now have given them a new weight. One I hope to find comfortable on my shoulders now and in the future.