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All day the noise and smells from the roadwork behind my house assault my brain. Drilling, scraping, jackhammering, dumping, steamrolling, beeping. This has been going on for many months. They say it will be finished by the end of this year. Then the construction in our condo complex will make its way onto our block. The front porch of the house above ours is tilting downward. Sagging? Can concrete sag? To prevent the sudden collapse of the concrete onto our heads as we walk out of our front door, they installed two thick poles that frame our front door and theoretically hold up the dispirited concrete. Later, they added poles running diagonally from the front of our house to the cement stairs we walk down to reach our house. These poles prevented us from walking directly to our next door neighbor’s house. Instead we have to walk up our stairs and down theirs to get to the door that’s maybe six feet away from ours. More recently they installed large sheets of plywood next to our door and the neighbor’s door, and began to dig a hole through what was the walkway between them. I don’t know what the hole is for. It’s been there for months now.
At night the noise from within my head keeps me awake. Until the last couple years, falling asleep came easily to me, and I could do it under almost any circumstances. Now, the tiny blinking light from a digital device, the gurgle of the toilet running downstairs, the smell of my own sweat will keep me awake. As many nights as not I have to move to a different room because my husband is snoring. We’ve shared a bed for 21 years and I’m sure he didn’t just start snoring this year, but I’m no longer able to ignore it. He says I snore too, which may be true but he manages to sleep anyway.
Of course it’s not just the external stimuli that keep me awake. It’s also the trickster commonly called perimenopause. If you’re a woman my age and you’re experiencing almost any vexing symptom, it’s likely perimenopause. And it feels impossible to extricate the anxiety from hormonal roller coaster. It’s all in there, swirling around like ratatouille or risotto in my head, convincing me that it requires vigilance and constant attention, lest something boil over or burn.
Meanwhile, in my husband’s brain, insidious and mean-spirited demons, also known as glioblastoma, are at work. He is battling them with daily chemo pills and 30 doses of radiation, which surprisingly feels like nothing. He is feeling fine so far, after weeks of worrying that treatment would knock him out. I am holding my breath, wondering when the other shoe will drop. He is not working, which is understandably confusing for him. He’s had to work for the past three decades. Instead, he is making new friends. Our people have shown up for us in beautiful and powerful ways. Friends signed up to drive him to the hospital every day for radiation. Friends are coming over to play cribbage with him. Friends are taking him to his favorite park. Some of these folks he already knew. Some of them I knew but he had never met. Some of them were, honestly, just acquaintances or friends of friends or people on Facebook who we met 20 years ago, but now they’re real friends, because they are showing up.
My husband is an introvert. He cares about people and he cultivates relationships with people he volunteers and works with, and he is incredibly kind. But he’s often struggled in social situations where he feels like he isn’t being heard, or that his presence isn’t valued. Now, everyone tells him frequently and explicitly that he matters, that he is valued, and that they want the best for him and want to spend time with him and want to be of help. If only it didn’t take a life-threatening diagnosis to make this happen. In ordinary circumstances, it would likely be perceived (by many people, if not all) as awkward or odd to post on social media that you’re looking for good people to do fun things with your husband. But in this situation, it’s all good. He has often wondered (and worried) about what his legacy is, and if he’s made a difference in the world. Now he’s gotten hundreds and hundreds of affirmations and confirmations that his existence and his actions and simply his compassion and kindness have been known and felt and will have ripple effects far into the future.
While he was in the hospital, I embarked on some kind of fever pitch Marie Kondo quest to get rid of stuff from our house. We’ve always had a lot of clutter and I have always—constantly—steadily tried to purge things whenever possible. But this time around I was possessed by this fervor. Friends and family came over and helped me make decisions, organize, and physically remove junk from my house so I didn’t have to worry about it. Bags and boxes went to Goodwill. Bags and boxes were posted on Buy Nothing. I delivered donations to people I thought could use them. I cleaned, I consolidated, I threw away so much crap. Almost all of those piles of “we’ll figure this out later” are gone now. Not that our house is spotless or minimalist now, but I do feel a sense of relief that our existence is less crowded. It’s possible I thought that getting rid of all the unneeded physical stuff would also empty my mind of unnecessary garbage. And maybe in some way it did. Because something had to go to make room for the currently consuming thoughts of scheduling appointments and seeking support and following medication regimens, on top of the regularly scheduled concerns about parenting, paying bills, and that oft-mentioned and elusive “self-care” that I hear so much about. I went to the dentist today and learned that one of my teeth that already had a filling now has a cavity on its side so I will need a crown (or possibly a root canal!) and we’ve maxed out our dental insurance benefit. Does this count as self-care? Technically, I’m caring for myself, but it wasn’t terribly fun. I’ll keep working on that. Oh—I’m going to see live music tonight with friends. Much more pleasant than a root canal.
Between the time I started writing this and now, the noise has stopped. The construction workers have gone home for the day. The wind that’s been blowing leaves around has stilled. I’ll try to follow suit and allow my brain to quiet down as well. At least for a little while.
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Made lists
Cleaned bathrooms for no good reason even the toilets
Threw away old stuff
Poured more Drano down the shower drain
Checked pantry for mouse poop
Washed hands many times
Started laundry and sprinkled in essential oils to combat stink
Washed all the clothes I wore in the hospital and thought of Avett Brothers lyric
Ate a brownie
Finished the milk
Went through the accumulated mail
Found another speed camera ticket
Answered 12-year-old’s question “what happens if you can’t afford to pay a ticket?” by explaining they just keep doubling the fine until you can’t afford it even more and there’s nothing you can do about it
Perused the library books I checked out
Put several in the pile to return
Read a chapter or two of several others, mostly about British witches
Had hot flashes
Changed pajamas
Had hot flashes
Changed pajamas
Ate saltines
Tried to plug in 12-year-old’s phone but couldn’t find the charger
Dust-busted some lint in a corner
Looked online for used loft beds and chairs
Wondered why people use strange names for chairs
Thought about measuring space where chair would go but didn’t, again
Wondered why resale economics is so confusing
Put stuff in Amazon cart for when money appears in bank account
Felt guilty about using Amazon but not enough to stop
Rearranged apps on phone screen to reflect current realities and also make pretty patterns
Checked location of daughter out late at college and remembered it’s ok to go out late at college
Checked location of daughter to make sure she was no longer out
Piled up trash by the front door
Scowled at heap of recycling that has not broken itself down or taken itself out
Checked all social media platforms for anything important, found nothing
Couldn’t stop thinking even for a second during all this activity about the fact that there’s a tumor in a lab somewhere that was recently in my husband’s brain and how that clump of cells has changed all of our lives and we don’t even know how yet
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The night before we drove to Georgia to take my daughter to college, we stayed with my cousin and his family, which includes a clever and adorable toddler. While Zoe had never met the little guy until that night, coming off her summer as a camp counselor and years of babysitting gigs, they became fast friends. Around 4am, I heard Mr. Toddler crying and wanted to give his parents a break and tend to him. He was happy to have a new diaper and I tried to get him back to sleep, but he was not having it. He raced into the living room and I assumed he was heading for his parents’ bedroom. Instead, he veered toward the air mattress where Zoe was sleeping. I tried a few times to scoop him up and redirect him back to his room or just onto the couch with me, but he was insistent on being with Zoe. He snuggled up with her, she curled her arm around him, and they both fell back asleep.
Naturally, I took this as a sign. Here was my baby girl–preparing to make her own way in the world–and instead of seeking comfort, she was providing it to someone else much younger and more vulnerable than she is. Of course, it’s not quite that simple, but it made for a nice metaphor and a sweet photograph.
It’s been two weeks now since we moved Zoe into her freshman dorm. I have reminded myself 1,000 times that Zoe’s experience in college will be different from mine. Our personalities and ways of being in the world are distinct. No one had smartphones or even email or the internet when I started college. Her college–which I think is exactly right for her–emphasizes different values and opportunities than mine did (at least at the time). And, humans are still human and the mix of emotions and desires and fears and aspirations remain the same. I’m so excited to be on my own and I’m terrified to be on my own. I can’t wait to meet new people and make new friends but the ones I have already are so good why do I need others and what if people don’t like me and what if they do and who do I want to be in this place? What if I don’t know what to do? What if I make a mistake? Am I ready for this? This is all so different from what I’m used to and there’s so much to take in–when will I be able to relax and feel like this is home? But I already have a home 600 miles away. Big sigh.
I’m pretty sure all these questions have been swirling around in Zoe’s mind, even though she’s only articulated some of them to me. And while I am absolutely confident that Zoe has what she needs to thrive in college, I have all the correlating parent concerns. Zoe is great at making friends and has demonstrated that in particular throughout the years she’s been a camper and camp counselor. She proved at camp that she can learn new skills and excel at new responsibilities. She’s overcome homesickness and learned from mistakes. She’s planned and taken trips with friends, she knows how to cook, and she’s handled more than her share of car breakdowns. So there is no doubt in my mind that she can do this. It’s more about the how and when. How will she find her people and how long will it take ? Thankfully, she already has a fantastic roommate who she met on Instagram over the summer (which apparently is how many college kids match with roommates these days). Having a great roommate is an ideal foundation, but you can’t put all your social eggs in one person’s basket. Will she take advantage of the opportunities offered to her? Will she go after things that might be outside her comfort zone without me there to encourage her? Will she ask for help when she needs it instead of struggling in silence? Specifically, will she ask for help from people who aren’t me?
This was the primary focus of the day-long family orientation we participated in the day after moving Zoe into her dorm and taking her on what seemed like the 77th Target run of the week. While the students engaged in their own orientation activities, Randy and I heard from deans and department heads and staff and students about all the ways the college works to educate our kids, enable them to become leaders, and teach them to become global citizens (all while providing emotional, social, and physical support and care). Just as life for students is different than it was 30 years ago, so is life for parents. I’ve heard from friends who are college professors and admissions staff the absurd lengths that some parents go to once their children are enrolled to make sure their needs are met–unwilling or unable to let or make their kids figure things out for themselves. (“My child is sick, can someone please bring them some chicken soup?” “I see that it’s raining there, can someone at the school give my child an umbrella?”) So the orientation was provided so anxious parents would know what’s what and how things work, so when our kids inevitably ask us for help or tell us they don’t know what’s going on or how to do what they’re supposed to do, we can tell them with certainty that there’s someone or some office that they can visit. This was a common refrain throughout the orientation sessions, “If you student says they don’t/can’t/haven’t/are confused about something, your job is not to try to fix the problem, or to call us. Your job is to tell your student, ‘Ask your advisor/RA/professor/dean/any of the people at the college whose job is to help you.'”
Two of the deans who we heard from were especially kind and reassuring in their words to us. It was clear they weren’t chastising us for wanting to help our kids. It’s our Mama (or Papa or Auntie or Grandma or Grandpa, etc) Bear instinct. We never want to see our kids struggling or in pain, so we want to make whatever is troubling them go away as fast as possible. Turns out that college is a lot like preschool in some ways. It takes longer and a lot of patience to get your kids to learn to find and put on their own shoes and coat than when you do it for them, but if you do it for them, what incentive do they have to learn to do it themselves? Some kids might decide they want the autonomy, and some kids won’t. I suspect that college will be like preschool sometimes in that I won’t always be able to stop myself from trying to solve a problem instead of encouraging Zoe to solve it herself, but I promise I’m going to try.
The Dean of the College shared in her remarks that she is the mother of a college student herself, and that last year her daughter was a freshman at a college far away from home. Her daughter called to say she was sick–congested, coughing, and generally feeling awful. Often when you feel like that, you just want your mom. And the dean was ready to get on a plane. She said she even had the flight selected on the computer when she called her friend –the other dean–and asked if she should go take care of her daughter. The answer, unsurprisingly, was no. The daughter was not in grave danger–she had a yucky virus. The Mama Dean took some deep breaths and closed her laptop. And it turned out her daughter’s roommates were happy to go to the store to get her some medicine, chicken soup, and gatorade. Her daughter’s professors understood why she missed a couple classes and she was able to make up her assignments. And most importantly, both daughter and mom knew that daughter had made it through being sick far away from home and felt better knowing it. When the dean was telling this story, I started to tear up. I really hadn’t cried the day before–there was so much to be done and so much adrenaline and I didn’t have to say goodbye to Zoe yet–but right then, hearing from Mama Dean, my emotion started to leak out. After that session I went up to Mama Dean to thank her for sharing that story and she said she saw me there in the second row tearing up and that she knew exactly what I was feeling. That was one of the many moments during those two days when I knew that Zoe would be well looked after.
I didn’t realize how soon after hearing these wise words from the college staff that I would have to challenge myself to follow their instructions.
“I got an email from the professor of the class I was on the waitlist for. I didn’t really understand what she was asking us to do and it seems hard and I don’t know what to do should I just drop the class? “
“Why don’t you email the professor and ask her your questions directly?”
“I shouldn’t just drop the class?”
“Well, you could, but I think it would be better if you asked the professor your questions in case you want to take the class or another class from her in the future, so you can get a better understanding of what she’s doing.”
Zoe did email the professor, got more information, and decided she would like to take the class in the future but didn’t feel ready for it yet, which she told the professor. Other questions, “What should I do this weekend? I don’t know anything that’s going on and I don’t know what anyone is doing.” were trickier to answer. I admit I offered some combination of “ask around, look around, what about x or y?” but was met with some resistance. Eventually Zoe said some friends were going thrifting after seeing a movie, and she wanted to go thrifting but not see the movie, and she didn’t know how to accomplish that. At the moment I was tired and I texted, “I trust that you will figure it out.” And lo and behold, she did. She has skipped a few of the activities where I thought she might meet people, but she swore she would attend the student engagement fair tomorrow. I asked her to promise me that she would talk with people at at least four tables and sign up for at least two things. She said she would. I am optimistic.
Meanwhile, she’s been doing her homework. She is excited about her professors and the readings. All her classes are subjects she is genuinely curious about and interested in. I am trying not to ask her too many questions about what she’s doing in class, but am always happy to engage when she brings it up. I learned long ago that I tend to ask more questions than most teenagers (or at least Zoe) are interested in answering. I’m a work in progress. Zoe’s called several times. I’ve learned that if I’m in the middle of something I can text her back to ask if it’s urgent. Usually it’s not and she says I can call her back later. I did pick up right away when she called to tell me about Taylor Swift’s and Travis Kelce’s engagement. Some news just can’t wait.
Even though she was away most of the summer working at camp, this feels different–because it is. I know she’s coming home for a weekend in October, and then for Thanksgiving and winter break. But knowing just how far away she is and everything she’s working to figure out–and how much energy that requires–it’s hard to be the Mama Bear right now. She’s been right here with me for 18 years and suddenly she’s not. My heart hurts.
Some people are more private about their emotions and their family life, which I respect. I tend to share (some might say overshare, but oh well) because I need the solidarity and affirmation and encouragement that my community provides. A couple days ago I posted on Facebook about overwhelming feelings of anxiety brought on by a variety of things, including Zoe’s absence. The responses I received were reassuring and comforting. In particular, a friend of mine from church who has two grown daughters of her own, said this: “Remember that you are with Zoe – as cells created in your body, as a lifetime of wise actions you modeled, and as loving words that will follow her the rest of her days. And she resides in your heart.” Rereading it now makes the tears come again.
Zoe gives me long, emphatic hugs. When we said goodbye the night before we left Georgia, I thought she might hold on forever. I was a little teary then, but I was proud of myself for keeping the sobs in until we were far away from her dorm. As she continues on her college adventure, I’ll be here to listen to–and try not to solve-her problems. And I’ll look forward to that hug when she comes home.
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Today, for our 20th wedding anniversary, I took our kid to the library to research Megan Rapinoe and browse the cookbook section because our kid has lice and the fifth grade is complete chaos. As is often the case even though we both work from home, Randy and I saw each other in passing, sharing a quick kiss and saying “I love you” when I left the house. We’ve texted more often than we’ve spoken in person today. I am pretty sure he is upstairs right now finishing up his last work meeting of the day from his desk in the corner of our bedroom. His is not an ideal office space, but pandemic + small house = it is what it is. More often we work in the family room together. My desk is there, another space completely lacking privacy. See previous sentence. Meanwhile, Niki is in their room participating in their online book club, and Zoe is working her shift at the front desk at EvolveAll, one of her two afterschool jobs. Dinner will be a meal kit from Marley Spoon. As usual, the washer and dryer are running (today on high heat to guarantee extermination of any persistent lice). Despite our continuous folding, a new mountain of clean laundry is rising on the loveseat.
Lest you think we are completely unromantic, we will celebrate with a date at the Birchmere (one of our favorite live music venues) tomorrow night, sans kids. And, more extravagantly, we are planning a trip to Canada for this summer. This will be our first trip ever without the kids that’ll last longer than a weekend, I’m pretty sure. I am giddy with excitement as I imagine the simplicity of our decision making every time we want to eat or choose an activity for a whole week. So we will continue with our regularly (over)scheduled lives tonight and really do it up in a few months.
We have not bought each other anniversary presents for many years, although we did Google the “traditional” 20th anniversary gift. It is china. We were not interested in china when we got married and we still have no need of it. We also have no plans to visit China, or acquire it. The “modern” 20th anniversary gift is platinum. I’m not even sure what items exist that we could purchase made of platinum. Our friends suggested we dye our hair platinum blond for the occasion. Too much trouble. So I am offering the gift I know best: words.
Things I love about my husband:
- He loves and supports me unconditionally. I remember when I was growing up seeing examples of marriages (not my parents’, thankfully) in which one or both spouses frequently questioned or criticized their choices or actions, even the seemingly smallest and least significant. Our marriage includes a lot of room for mistakes. We’ve both made plenty. We try to model this grace for our kids. Randy encourages me to do what I want to do. He believes in me and reminds me that I’m awesome, and I try to do the same for him.
- He cares so much about the world and the people in it and making life better for them. In my dad’s toast at our wedding reception, my dad said the two of us exemplified the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam, which means to repair or improve the world. For better or worse, we’re both still at it. Randy devotes a massive amount of time and energy to Tikkun Olam–through both paid and volunteer work as an advocate for economic, social, housing, and food justice. He meets with policymakers to convince them to reinstate the Child Tax Credit and expand nutrition benefits. He volunteers at our local food bank. He writes letters to the editor. He helps total strangers who find him on social media to navigate the complexities of applying for public benefits. He is writing a book. He is ready for a revolution. He has a heart that is sometimes so big it hurts.
- He loves and is moved by music as much as I am. The longer we’ve been together, the more of our musical tastes overlap, and he’s introduced me to some of my favorite artists. There are few things we love more than enjoying live music together. I can usually predict when a piece of music will make him cry. Often we seek or find different things meaningful in the music we listen to, both of us appreciate the power of music and what it means to us individually and together.
- Long, long before he was a dad, Randy was the master of the dad joke. He is a punster of the highest degree. He will never, ever, ever pass up the opportunity to make a joke. One time at the dinner table he burst out laughing seemingly apropos of nothing. After he settled down, we asked what was so funny and he said he couldn’t even remember, but he had remembered something funny from sometime and just started cracking up. I can’t imagine falling in love with someone who didn’t make me laugh. Fortunately Randy makes me laugh every day, so I’m still in love!
- Except for cribbage, with which I struggle because of the mental math, we are absurdly evenly matched at gameplay and wordplay and puzzles and we have fun matching wits. Randy is typically a bit better at strategy and looking ahead to the next move. I’m usually a bit better when speed or improvisation is involved. But give us a crossword or Bananagrams or Trivial Pursuit or just some silly rhyming thing we make up to amuse each other when we’re trying to fall asleep and not think about everything that’s wrong with the world, we’re likely to keep pace with each other until one or both of us just passes out from exhaustion.
- He is still curious and eager to learn and discover new things and people and places. Someday when we have more money and time we will travel to all the places we want to explore. Since we decided to visit Montreal, he has been dedicated to practicing French with Duolingo every day. I haven’t been nearly as disciplined. We are both always reading, writing, and putting ourselves out there in different ways to engage with the world. I can’t imagine either of us ever getting complacent, or apathetic, or bored.
- He is a wonderful dad. For a while he was convinced he wouldn’t know how to be a good dad, but he figured it out. 🙂 He loves and supports our kids unconditionally too, and encourages them to be themselves 100%. He has shared his passion for soccer with them, and they are now as devoted and knowledgable fans as he is, or maybe more. He has such a great attitude about school, and sports, and success in general and helps them to do their best without putting any pressure on them to be perfect.
- He is a phenomenal hugger.
Our wedding day was unusually hot and filled with cicadas and wonderful people and so much love. Twenty years has gone by in a flash, but also contained immeasurable joy and adventure and fun and certainly plenty of challenges. My brain is too full right now to even imagine what’s in store for the next 20, but I’m confident that love and joy and adventure and fun and wonderful people will all be in the mix. In the meantime, it’s time to make dinner. Happy anniversary, babe.
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You shared only your
smoothest prayers
sent them sailing
on the winter wind
through moonless night skies
from where you sit in the universe
to the small space
I occupy tonight
in an unfamiliar room
our momentary home
On their way
from you to me
they glided into the
open hearts of
all the gods and goddesses
who whispered them aloud
and with strong and
gentle hands
surrounded us
with love
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I just ordered $100 worth of dairy-free meal replacement smoothies for my teenager, to pick up at Whole Foods tomorrow, because eating anything solid causes her severe stomach pain and she’s nauseated all the time. She came home early from school yesterday, with a COVID test in hand and instructions on how to take it with a certified COVID test instructor watching her on video. She has taken dozens of COVID tests already, and she knows how to do it, but I understand they want to make sure people are doing it right. Certified COVID test instructor Mhaxine (who must recite her script a hundred times a day) had us focus my phone’s camera on various codes on the box and on my ID and on the test results. Zoe doesn’t have COVID, which I already knew. But now you can’t be home sick from school or go to the clinic without testing. You can’t go back to school without emailing the negative test results to the school nurse and attendance office. Meanwhile, we are going back and forth with the pediatrician and the pediatric gastroenterologist and Zoe is scheduled to have an endoscopy in two weeks. She’s missed two days of crew–which you’re not supposed to miss any days of between February 21 and the end of May. Tomorrow I’m going to deliver an açaí bowl to her at lunchtime because it’s one of the only things she’s been able to eat over the past few days without feeling sick. When your kid is miserable, all your priorities shift.
At least she has beautiful nails. I took her with me to the nail salon last weekend and she somehow managed to get acrylic nails without me noticing until I had to pay the bill. Even if she can’t eat, she can at least admire her nails and enjoy the sound of tapping them on her phone.
I have a list on my desk of all the appointments I need to schedule: mammogram (oh I guess I need to see the gynecologist first, to get a referral), colonoscopy, dentist, kids’ dentist, my dermatologist, etc. All things I’ve been putting off or rescheduling since COVID. Hopefully I won’t have lumps or polyps or cavities or dangerous moles. I keep thinking I could just spend a day making appointments, but that would not be a very pleasant day. Since COVID seems to be never going away, I just need to suck it up.
Also tomorrow I am taking Niki to a camp that they don’t especially want to go to, even though it seems amazing, because they would rather stay home and play video games all day, which they think is awesome but I do not. Tomorrow is a parent-teacher conference day, so they don’t have school, but I still have to work. Someday we will have a house where I can have an office that is not in the same room as the tv and the xbox, but that day has not yet come. So off to camp they go. Last week I finally finished signing them up for summer camps and classes. This year they have fencing and archery, a camp where they drive to different parks and explore them and look for little creatures and give them names (at least that’s what they did at that camp last year), book illustration, art, and Minecraft camp (I consented to one week of this since the rest of the camps are active or artsy). Three of the weeks (book illustration and art) are just half day classes rather than full day camps because I don’t have to work those weeks and so Niki will not complain about having to go outside when it’s hot or eat lunch in a room that’s smelly. I would say my kids are spoiled, but truthfully I don’t like eating lunch outside on the ground when it’s hot or in a room that’s smelly, so I can’t blame them.
Oh, how could I forget Niki is also going to sleep away camp for the first time this summer. We all think they will love it. They’ve been to family camp at Camp Friendship twice already. They know the people, they know the place. They have not, however, slept away from us in quite a while. They can go to sleep if someone is at our house, but not if they’re at someone else’s house. And they still love to fall asleep intertwined with a parent. We are having faith that it will all work out when they are at camp. Zoe will be there too, but of course not in the cabin with them. We still have six months to prepare. Zoe was homesick at night for the first few years she went to camp, even though she loved it there. She says she eventually would fall asleep just because she was exhausted. I am constantly reminding myself that my kids are capable of things we haven’t seen them do yet, and they will be ok. Hopefully we’ll be ok too. Whenever Zoe is at camp I check the website compulsively for photos of her having fun, and race to the mailbox to look for letters. I remind myself that, during a rocky first grade year, Niki dreaded school–and then it ended because of COVID. Then we homeschooled for a year. And they did not especially want to go back to school for third grade because it was so much fun being home with me all day! And they never had to get dressed! And they played video games after they finished their work! It took a while for them to get used to school again (as it did for most kids I think, whether or not they were homeschooled or virtual schooled or hybrid schooled last year) and now they actually like school. They come home and talk about what they learned, and look forward to seeing their friends, and miss school when they have to stay home. I honestly wasn’t sure that would ever happen again, since it basically hadn’t happened since kindergarten. I had started to think kindergarten was some magical year that we would never experience again and school would be a battle forever. But it’s ok now.
And there is a nation of innocent people being attacked for no reason by an evil lunatic dictator. There are a lot of blue and yellow flags and lights and tributes. But I sure don’t know what to do, except wonder why our world is such a mess. The president stood up for LGBTQIA+ kids and mental health care in his State of the Union speech, but did not mention canceling student debt, or racial equity, or DC statehood. I did enjoy seeing two women–Kamala Harris and Nanci Pelosi–sitting behind him though, instead of two white guys. And maybe if the other old white guys don’t get in the way, Ketanji Brown Jackson will be confirmed to the Supreme Court and we’ll be just a little closer to having more justices who look like the people in our country and again, not all old white guys. No offense to the old white guys I love. They are not the ones I’m talking about.
In preparation for a meeting at work today I watched this video by Georgetown Law professor Kristin Henning, author of The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth. I have the book on my desk to start reading next week. As part of my new job with DC Action, I’m working with folks to reframe the conversation on youth and crime. Professor Henning describes in the video how Black young people are targeted and often arrested or harmed because they’re seen doing normal adolescent activities. DC Action and our partners are working to help District leaders, journalists, and others understand that there’s more to the story of a 14-year-old charged with carjacking than the need to lock him up for a long time or hold him accountable. Does it not occur to anyone that when 12-, 13-, and 14-year-olds are committing crimes like these, we need to look deeper? As I’ve written in op-eds and blog posts, the people who need to be accountable are the adults who are failing to provide meaningful out-of-school-time activities, mentoring, emotional support, job opportunities, and mental health care to young people–especially young Black people–who have suffered disproportionately through the pandemic. I see the struggles in my own kids, who have as much support and resources as they could possibly need. So when I read every day about people trying to ban books by and about Black and brown people and LGBTQIA+ people (don’t get me started on Texas Gov. Abbott who would rather have queer kids committing suicide than offer their families support) and school systems prohibiting teachers and students from discussing race or racism, or people saying antiracism is actually racism, I get enraged. No wonder I can’t sleep.
This, I think, is why people are obsessed with Wordle right now. It’s not always easy, but it’s definitely solvable. You can point to it (which is why so many people post their scores, although I do not) and say, “Hey, I did a thing! I accomplished something despite my existential angst and general feeling of despondence about our country and our world and all the personal and global problems with which I am grappling.” Or maybe that’s just why I play Wordle.
I haven’t been back to church in weeks, even though they’ve resumed in-person services. Going to church has always brought joy to me and been so important in my life, but the thought of going back again where everyone is masked and I don’t recognize even my friends and hugging is no longer a thing just makes me anxious and sad. I know wishing everything were back to “normal” is futile and there’s no such thing as normal anymore. But I haven’t yet arrived at a state of grace where I can embrace the constant change and dizzying feeling of flux. Maybe some days. But not today.
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They only ask for the impossible
It is up to me to make it real
They live in worlds of their own creation
I commute back and forth, hurtling through space when I am summoned
They commandeer my body, almost as insistently as when they were babies
Even now they want a snack and need a snuggle and ask me to stay until they fall asleep
They want me to guess their secrets, to read their minds, to understand what they can’t quite speak
Sometimes I do. Sometimes I can’t. Sometimes it’s too raw too much too painful to take in. I don’t have it in me anymore to pretend otherwise.
They want to be with me and away from me at the same time.
They only ask for the impossible
It is up to me to come up with an answer
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There are no new outfits laid out for tomorrow. No backpacks filled with fresh school supplies, no lunches prepared in the fridge. We haven’t met any of Zoe’s teachers. We sort of met Zeke’s teacher online for a few minutes but she was preoccupied providing tech support to everyone. Usually the night before the first day of school is exciting, if also nerve-wracking. But this year—-the year of Covid—we are mostly filled with dread.
Ok maybe I’m just speaking for me. But I do know my kids are not looking forward to tomorrow. Based on the track record with school technology, we have extremely low expectations for how smoothly anything will go. And what are we supposed to say to motivate them? How can you make new friends in second grade when you can’t see any of your classmates or talk to them at lunch or play with them at recess? And friends are the only thing that makes middle school bearable but once again, how can you find them when the only activity you have in common is sitting in your room watching your teacher on a screen?
To be clear, I don’t blame teachers for this. I love teachers. I know teachers work their butts off and I know they hate this situation as much as we do. They didn’t sign up for this. And I assume that the principals and administrators are all doing the best they can. Certainly I wouldn’t want to be working for a school district and trying to figure this mess out. I guess I could blame Trump for his ineptitude at handling the country’s response to the virus. But that doesn’t really help us tonight.
I heard on NPR that a quarter of Americans report having symptoms of depression during the pandemic. And that probably doesn’t count kids, whose feelings often manifest in a million different ways that can be hard to identify. I’ve witnessed a wide variety of these behaviors this summer. And what’s going to change now? The kids will have something they have to do during the day, but will they be engaged in it? Will any of it be fun? Will they be able to develop any real relationships? Is there anything to look forward to? I’m generally an optimistic person, but sustaining a positive outlook these days is hard. I can only manage it for a few minutes at a time.
I have thought a lot about homeschooling Zeke but ultimately I don’t feel like I could devote the attention to teaching him that he deserves and also do my job. And I want him to have friends. More recently I thought about taking Zoe out of her middle school and enrolling her in a virtual homeschool program that is more established and seems more well run than her school which is currently making everything up as they go along. But she wanted to stick with what she knows, even if it’s not exactly what she’s used to. I thought about arguing about it more but I honestly don’t know what the right thing to do is.
I want my kids to be good people, and be kind and curious and creative. I want them to want to learn new things and meet new people. I want them to learn how to get along in the world while still being true to themselves. I want them to have fun. Can they do all that in virtual school? Is it up to us to teach them these things and not rely on school for anything? Is the time they’re going to spend staring at their iPads going to be worthwhile or a waste? I do not know.
In any case, I’m setting my alarm for earlier than usual, so I can make sure everyone is awake and dressed and fed before school starts. The school district tech support number is written on a post it note on my desk.
If your kid is starting school tomorrow, good luck. May the force be with you. Here goes…
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Can’t sleep. Finished the book I was reading. Did the NYT crossword. Checked Facebook and Instagram and found no breaking news. Earlier tonight when I was lying in bed reading, Randy went into the closet and came out with a button down shirt and khakis on hangers and hung them on our linen press. This was the first time he’s done that since March. I had forgotten that his office is reopening in phases and his group is eligible to go in this week. He was actually allowed to go in on Tuesday but he was coughing a little so the app that his company instructed employees to use to monitor their health advised him to call a doctor and wait until he was free of any symptoms for three days. The cough had disappeared by Tuesday night and the doctor said if no other symptoms developed (they didn’t), he was fine.
We discussed his plan to go into the office a few weeks ago when his company announced the system and precautions they were implementing. Randy and I agreed it might be worthwhile for him to go in and check things out and if he felt it was unsafe in any way he could just come home. Theoretically this would enable me to work in our home office again and reduce the number of zoom meetings and google hangouts I have to do from our bed or in the family room or dining room with kids asking questions or the Xbox making noise. It’s been way too hot to work in the backyard tent. And perhaps being in the office would enable Randy to have his own quiet time away from the kids and the noise of me having my meetings in the next room and just break up the monotony of never leaving the house except to check the mail. And the mail is usually junk anyway.
But now I am worried about him going into the office with people I don’t know. People outside our bubble. In a building whose ventilation system may it may not be good. This afternoon and evening I participated in three consecutive online meetings. During the first one, related to one of my clients, someone announced that she had heard from someone who worked at the Pentagon that the whole country was going to shut down for two weeks except for hospitals. While I doubt this was anything but wishful thinking that our government was suddenly going to take the coronavirus seriously and do something to save lives, the idea kind of freaked me out, if only because I imagined it would spark some sort of insurrection by the people who believe wearing masks infringes on their individual liberty.
The second video call was a school board meeting during which members of the public were invited to voice their opinions about the proposed learning models for the fall. Last month the school system announced that the options would be 100% distance learning and a hybrid of distance learning and two days a week of in-person school. Parents were asked to choose a model for their children by July 20. Then Tuesday they announced that everyone would do 100% distance learning until at least October or November and then some magic formula would be used to transition to the original plan. Everyone is freaking out about all this. I get it. No one knows what will happen. People want their kids and families to be safe. People want their kids’ and their lives to go back to “normal.” But there is no normal anymore. Teachers are pleading for a plan that doesn’t require them to choose between their health and their jobs. At the meeting tonight, the vast majority of testimonies were in favor of distance learning or another community-created plan. Many of the callers were teachers. Only a few people were in favor of full-time in-person school, which is what the Trump administration would prefer, despite the continued surge in cases nationwide and mounting evidence that Covid-19 does affect kids. I was relieved, at least, that the callers were all respectful and reasoned in their statements. This was in sharp contrast to the Facebook comments during Tuesday’s briefing from the superintendent where most parents came across as self-centered and entitled, not to mention rude and disrespectful. I sure wouldn’t want the job of school administrator right now. Under the best of circumstances it is impossible to please everyone, but now when everyone is traumatized and panicked, there’s a whole new level of demands.
Friends have been asking me what I think and what we’ve chosen for our kids and I repeat my mantra that I’m trying not to get too invested in the discussion because the only things that seem clear to me are that we have no control over the global health situation right now and that whatever happens with the schools may change a million times between now and September 8. I know how lucky we are that I have a flexible job and can take care of my kids as needed. I recognize that privilege. I also wish people would calm down. There are a lot of type A parents in Arlington who need to realize their kids will not fall behind when everyone in the universe is in this same position. I wish more parents were willing to think creatively about how we can make education different or better or innovative in some way instead of trying to make it normal or squeeze it into this box that had just been upended.
The third zoom meeting was, happily, a trivia night hosted by our martial arts studio, just as a fun way to keep the community connected. We were winning after the first half but sank to fifth place by the end thanks to some tricky questions about the periodic table and the meaning of Simba’s name. (Lion) Also we didn’t trust our instincts about plasma or Aaron Burr. But we had fun. EvolveAll’s general manager, Brian, played great music (from my youth, so zoe complained it was all old) while we conferred on answers to the questions, and we laughed. It’s a relief to laugh. So many of these days are so tense. The bad news is relentless. And even a few days back from our vacation it feels like we’ve been stuck inside forever.
The other night zoe and I drove to CVS after midnight to buy bug bites remedies because she couldn’t sleep from the itching—a souvenir of our recent trip. Based on the advice of friends via Facebook, I bought Benadryl cream, calamine lotion, and another tube of something promising to alleviate pain from a variety of bites. I like to cover the bases. We wandered the aisles while we were there just in case there were other things we needed, taking advantage of the completely empty store. Cheap thrills.
It’s been four months now. I’ve stopped counting the days. I stopped blogging every day because I lost momentum. I remember back in March when I thought we’d still be able to go away for spring break, and back in April when we felt sure things would be back to normal by summer. Now the only thing I’m sure of is that we have to get used to this, even though no one wants to and it is still hard. Every other ad on my Facebook feed is for a different style or design of face mask. That’s the cool new thing to buy now.
Last night when swallowing a pill, something went awry and I spent an hour struggling to dispel the intense pain in my chest. I was crying and spitting and trying to burp. It was ridiculous and horrible. Twice before I have gone to urgent care with chest pain only to hear that it was probably indigestion. My heart, thankfully, is fine. And I’ve had the occasional panic attack as well. I think last night the tablet irritating my esophagus might also have triggered the panic, as the anxiety is always there under the surface, just waiting for an excuse to bubble up.
I should try again to sleep. I could write 1,000 more words about the other minutiae from my day but I won’t. This day has already lasted 40 hours at least. Tomorrow is Friday, but what does Friday even mean anymore? I should try again to sleep.
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Some of the subtle and unsettling changes in daily life that you notice 65 days into quasi-quarantine:
Instead of searching through the piles of clean laundry on the couch looking for some underwear or the pants that still fit, you’re mostly looking for a clean mask that fits.
You don’t realize until nighttime when you’re on a zoom call with friends that you haven’t looked in a mirror all day and had no idea that your hair looked like that.
Instead of showering at your convenience, you have to negotiate shower privileges with your spouse because both of you roll out of bed and start the day without bothering to shower until a) your first zoom call of the day or b) you need to leave the house to go to the grocery store or pickup takeout food.
Even though you can’t see it behind the mask, you still put on lipstick before leaving the house. Some habits stick around.
Instead of attempting to clean the house, you engage in micro cleaning. If one kitchen counter is wiped down, or one table cleared, or one shelf tidied, you count it as a victory. It is impossible to clean the whole house when everyone is in it all the time.
You realize that Target brand toilet paper is actually fine. Even though you’ve always been a toilet paper snob, both a Charmin loyalist and disdainful of Scott, when you found shelves filled with Target brand you snapped it up and have been pleasantly surprised.
You are grateful to three different friends who generously gave you gifts of dish soap. When you ran out, before your friends came to the rescue, you ordered dish soap online. Then it arrived and now you are blessed with dish soap to last for a while, which is good because your family continues to eat and drink with gusto.
You cannot concentrate on anything for mire than 30 seconds except when you are alone, which typically happens only after midnight or before 9am if you are able to wake up at 8. You seldom use these hours wisely, but that’s nothing new. Occasionally you meditate or write, and that has to be good enough.
You Ask a Lot of Questions 