BY MELANIE JIMENEZ
REFLECTIONS HEAD
I wonder how people with picture-perfect families are feeling right now. The ones that look happy and beautiful and straight out of a magazine. With their perfectly-shaped throw pillows and dust-free furniture and big, wide windows. The kind that looks like calm water on a clear day. I wonder how they’re getting through quarantine.
My family is far from picture-perfect. We argue a lot. We don’t go out to watch movies or eat out at a restaurant every month. Like me, my parents are solitary people. We’d all just rather… stay at home. We cook our own meals and experiment with recipes when we want to try something new. Although some experiments turn out a little less than palatable, we laugh it off and try again some other time. We watch movies or game shows on the living room TV, or just sit around, enjoying the company. Making homemade boba instead of going out. Eating together as a family, even though all six of us can’t fit at the tiny circular table in the kitchen.
Quarantine just meant more days like this. When the house is filled with the sound of dishes in the sink, or footsteps in the backyard, or the TV’s volume up much louder than it should be. Quarantine meant less experimenting with food and more improving the recipes I already knew. When going out to get ingredients was much more of a hassle than it was worth, I would get creative with what I had left at home. And, of course, make an effort not to waste the food when there was a shortage of it in stores.
Quarantine meant naps on the lumpy old couch. And dancing in the living room with all the furniture pushed against the walls. It meant piling pages of notes up on my desk because school work is too much to deal with and I can’t bother to put everything away anymore. Quarantine meant not doing my hair in the morning. Going to “school” in my pajamas. Eating during class. Sometimes not bothering to get out of bed for a whole day.
I wonder how picture-perfect families get through their days. Will they be able to push the couch against the big windows and dance in the middle of the room? Will their dust-free houses be relegated to messy workstations as everyone struggles to get things done? Will they be able to lay on their plump couches for a nap without fear of ruining the shape of it?
I used to look at home-improvement magazines with a sense of awe. The colors, shapes, textures, patterns—everything matched so perfectly. The color of the sink faucet matched the light fixtures. The backsplash in the kitchen was complimentary to the wallpaper in the living room. The floors were the perfect shade to highlight the fireplace. It was an artist’s vision, brought to life in a house.
The people in the magazines were always smiling. Looking at their families and laughing. Like they were happy. Like their perfect home held all the secrets to a perfect life.
I used to dream about living in a perfect home when I was younger. But I look around the home I have now—with the scratches on the walls, the dents on the furniture, the dust collecting in the corners we couldn’t care to clean regularly—and I think of how everything has a meaning.
The imperfections make my home my own. The dust and janky furniture and leaky faucets may be annoying at times, but they’re imperfect, just like my family is. It is the imperfections, the tiny little faults, the annoying habits, the unique characteristics, that really make me love my family. I don’t know if I’d be able to get through quarantine without them.
I wonder how perfect families are getting through quarantine.
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