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A photograph of a brown chocolate cake covered in brown icing. There is a large number “2” carved into the icing and there are three unlit candles clustered together. One candle is yellow and white, another is green and white, and the third is blue and white.
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Creating Tiny Bits of Order Amidst Chaos 5

Jenny Eckers

Hello. I have uploaded 10 photos that represent ways I have exercised my creativity during the pandemic. The pandemic started when my son was 6 months old. He is now 2 years old. He has never even been to a grocery store. During the pandemic, I have felt very isolated as a new mother, especially because I am not working. So one way I have tried to deal with this isolation is to find creative ways to show people I care about them. One way is to make bento box style lunches and dinners for my son. Even though he is too young to remember these, and half or 3/4 of it ends up on the floor, it gives me pleasure to make his meal look colorful and inviting. I like showing him that I care about him by giving him meals like this. I don't have time to do this every day, and they certainly don't look like some of the pictures I see on instagram. But it's just my little way of both using my creativity, which really has no other outlet since I'm not working, and showing my son I care about what he eats. It has also helped me focus on designing balanced nutritional meals for him since I have different compartments to fill.
Next, there is a picture of a salad and snack lunch I prepared for my husband who is a teacher. Lunch at school is a scary thing these days because you have to take your mask off. It's also very stressful to be a teacher right now. So I wanted to show my husband I cared about him by giving him a colorful, healthy salad and some nice snacks to eat. There are two pictures in this group - the salad itself, and the snacks that fit on top of the Bentgo salad container. The cup in the middle has lime juice which he uses as a dressing.
Next there is a picture of the chocolate two-layer cake I made for my son's 2-year-old birthday. I have never made a cake before. I think I put too much icing in the middle so the top layer slid off. Even though the cake is a mess, it shows one creative way I was determined to help my toddler celebrate his birthday. We couldn't have a party or have any friends over, but I still felt it was a special day because of the cake. It tasted good, even if it looked like a mess. And I had fun making it.
The next two pictures are my son's sock drawer and his bookshelf. Sometimes I feel like the world is falling apart, and I can never catch up on everything I want to do. So I try to find ways to create order in my life in small ways while also helping others. I am very proud of the sock drawer. Baby socks are tiny! I figured out that I can use plastic trays to organize the socks. It gives me pleasure when I open the drawer in the morning and I see everything lined up, and I don't have to hunt for the matching socks. Likewise, the bookshelf has books organized in height order, with books grouped together if they go together. There's no guarantee with a toddler that the bookshelf will stay like this for long. But when I look over at the bookshelf and see everything neatly organized, it helps calm me down a little - like I have control over something. I created some order out of chaos. And I like all the colorful books neatly organized. So these two things help me maintain a sense of order and calm amidst all the chaos.
The last picture is a picture of two baby sweaters I crocheted. Crocheting is my main hobby, but I don't have much time to do it with a toddler running around. It helps me focus on something other than the zillion thoughts running around my head. The reason there are two sweaters is that I made the first one an inch too short by accident. So I was determined to get it right. I am still going to gift the first sweater to someone who just had a baby, but now I have a second sweater to gift, too. I enjoying making crocheted gifts to show people I care about them. This picture was taken right after I had finished sewing on the buttons. I created these works to find an outlet for my creativity, to deal with isolation, to show family and friends I care about them, and to create some order and beauty amidst all the chaos the world is going through right now.