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Last night around 7pm Zoe was taking a walk around our neighborhood. When she realized she was being followed by an older man, she texted me to ask what to do. She said the man had shouted to her, “You don’t know who I am, do you?” I told her to cross the street. She did and reported that he was still watching her from across the street and keeping pace with her. I offered to come pick her up and she said yes. When I picked her up she pointed out the man who was still directly across the street from where I found her. After we pulled back into traffic I asked Zoe to take a photo, just in case. We drive home with Zoe clutching my hand.
Once home, after many hugs and reassurances that she was safe, and after we ate dinner, I shared the story on Facebook. Several friends urged me to report the incident to the police. The thought had crossed my mind but I dismissed it, figuring that the man hadn’t committed any crime. He freaked out my teenager, but that’s not illegal. Eventually I decided to report it online, and Zoe described everything again in detail as I filled in the web form.
Afterward Zoe told me how glad she was that I had talked with her about how to handle situations like this. A few years ago when I gave her permission to walk to a shopping area with friends after school, I instructed her to always be on the lookout for people who made her feel uncomfortable and to listen to her gut. I told her if someone was bothering her she should go into a a store or restaurant and tell them what was happening and they would let her stay there and call me. I told her if she’s out somewhere and there’s no place to go inside that she should find a group of people to attach herself to until she can get somewhere she feels safe.
A friend (and mom of teenage girls ) on Facebook tagged a self-defense instructor in her response to my post, suggesting the need for online self-defense classes as so many kids are out walking now for exercise. I mentioned that Zoe is a black belt in martial arts. If she were standing on a mat with this man, she could certainly punch and kick and put him in holds. But she does that on the mat. With other martial artists. Not when she’s walking down a street feeling nervous. I took self-defense classes in my 20s and I struggled to get past the verbal part of the practice exchanges with potential assailants because I didn’t want to be rude. I feel like there’s a chasm between an impulse to escape to safety when you feel threatened and actually preparing to fight or defend yourself physically. I imagine the last thing Zoe was thinking of on the street yesterday was what techniques she would use if the man caught up to her and attacked her. But maybe I’m wrong.
A couple friends on Facebook also suggested I share the story on our community Facebook page to alert others, which I did. What I discovered then was that this man seems to be well known in the neighborhood. Several people who I do not know in real life commented that they have encountered the man many times and some know his name and his story. A few commenters said the man seems to show signs of “cognitive decline” and that “he drinks a lot” and acts “disoriented,” but that he’s “sweet” and “harmless.” A few people said they had been wary of him getting too close to them or their kids. A few said the man reminded them of relatives or people they knew with Alzheimer’s.
I noticed that most of the people in the “he’s harmless” camp were men, and more people in the concerned camp were women, but neither perspective was entirely along gender lines. Two women asked if Zoe was ok and praised her for being aware of a situation that made her uncomfortable and knowing to ask for help.
The gist of the discussion, which, keep in mind, was among people (with one exception) who do not know my daughter or me, was that this man likely meant no harm to Zoe. So that is somewhat reassuring. Except for the fact that he is evidently experiencing significant enough cognitive decline or disorientation or intoxication that he doesn’t know or remember it’s not appropriate to follow and stare at and shout at 13-year-old girls walking down the street.
So here’s where it gets tricky. One man on the community Facebook page said he talks to the guy frequently and that we should “treat him with the kindness and respect we’d want for our own parents.” While I am all for treating people with kindness and respect, I also hope and expect that I—and members of my family—will be treated with kindness and respect. And it did not feel kind or respectful to Zoe when this man was following her, watching her, and shouting at her.
I understand that this man has the right to walk around his neighborhood. I understand that he is friendly and talkative and seems to want to engage with people. I also understand that my daughter has the right to walk around her neighborhood without feeling harassed or threatened or unsafe. These things are both true at the same time.
Of course I want my parents to be treated with kindness and respect when they are out walking in their neighborhood. But if my dad was following girls around and staring at them and make them feel uneasy, I would be concerned about his health. I would want to make sure his freedom to enjoy safely walking down the street wasn’t keeping other people from enjoying that same freedom.
I try not to engage in weighty conversation with strangers on the internet because I know where that goes and it’s usually nowhere good. I’ve been trolled and vilified by strangers in the comments. I am so conflict averse that sometimes if I post something that ends up sparking debate or argument among my friends I will delete the whole thing. I keep considering taking down my post to the neighborhood group, but I haven’t. What about the kindness and respect we would want for our own children?
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Tomorrow morning Zeke is taking a class about lemurs and I am super excited about it. Seriously. My friend Dana said her kids were going to try out classes on Outschool and demystified it for me. I’ve seen ads for Outschool on Facebook for months and months–way before pandemic time-but never needed to add another thing to my kids’ schedule. And also they were in school! And learning new things there! But now, as learning has slowed to a crawl and “school” will end in a month and it’s possible that all the camps will be canceled, I’ve gotta do something. Dana explained to me that some of the Outschool classes include several sessions over the course of a week or several weeks, and some are just 45 minutes long! And they cost $10 (the short ones).
One of the reasons I have been lamenting the prospect of no camp (other than the obvious one of my kids being out of the house for several hours a day interacting with people outside their family) is that camp is where they try new things. Camp is where they learn and practice things that we don’t know how to teach them. Camp is where they explore subjects and activities that that interest them and not necessarily their parents. Turns out that Outschool does this! Of course Outschool also includes classes in reading and writing and math, but for my purposes my kids can take digital SLR photography and consumer finance and superhero costume design and, starting tomorrow, Lemurs, Monkeys & Apes! I have no idea what the classes will be like, but I am optimistic. Did you pick that up?
Today included a variety of small, happy moments. Zoe and I unexpectedly found toilet paper at Target. Randy made a delicious dinner of sausage, peppers, and polenta. We used to eat polenta all the time but then we stopped. It was so lovely to see polenta on my plate again. Zeke did the whole lesson plan I created for him today with no actual complaining.
His video was a collection of images by Yayoi Kusama, who he learned about when we were looking through the Outschool course offerings (we signed him up for this class which I am definitely going to be taking with him but silently off camera. He made it completely on his own by googling Kusama and taking screen shots of photographs of her and her work. At the end, he showed it to me and I asked him if he could add the artist’s name to the first screen. He couldn’t remember how to do this so he looked up instructions in iMovie help and on YouTube and he made the edit, 100% on his own. I was super impressed.
While he was playing with the Sculpey, Zoe joined in and made this adorable little pig.
AND in an special post-Mother’s Day treat, both my children played (or perhaps hung out?) outside in our micro-back yard for a while this afternoon. I don’t know what they were doing except that involved the hammock and funny accents. But they were laughing and they were together and they were outside and that filled me with joy and delight.
(Another post-Mother’s Day treat was my husband using the plumbing snake kit I ordered online to snake all of our sinks, none of which back up anymore! It’s a Mother’s Day miracle!)
Our family decided today to cancel our beach vacation scheduled for July. We’ve gone to the beach together–in various combinations of extended family at various beaches up and down the East Coast–since I was a baby. These are not glamorous excursions to fancy resorts. But they are familiar and fun and something we always look forward to. It’s hard to imagine not going, but I understand that it’s too risky for my parents. At least we have tomorrow’s lemurs.
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Commonly asked questions in our house during the past two months of quasi-quarantine.
What is that smell?
What is there to eat?
Where are the clean masks?
Is that smell coming from me?
Can I have some screen time?
Is it Saturday?
Can we go outside?
Can we stay inside?
Can I have a snack?
Have you eaten any food today?
How are you eating all that food?
Are you done working?
Why do I have to do schoolwork?
Why do I need to go to bed?
Does this count as schoolwork?
Can I FaceTime someone?
Can I set up a zoom call?
Do I have to do the zoom call?
Do I have to turn my camera on?
Why is everyone texting me?
Why isn’t anyone texting me?
Why do I need to shower?
Is that safe?
Are you sure?
Why do I need to get dressed?
Are we ever going to be able to _______ again?
It turns out I only know the answers to a few of these questions. Still don’t know what that smell is.
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This will be short because I have a migraine, but it’s day 50 (other people’s day 50s have come and gone but I’ve never been good with numbers) and we got some tough news today so I feel compelled to write. Actually I’m a writer so I always feel compelled to write, but I have less stamina tonight.
We learned that Camp Friendship, the phenomenal sleepaway camp where Zoe has gone the past five summers, decided to cancel its summer season. Randy and Zoe were not surprised. I, as usual, was holding out hope for a miracle. It turns out I’m much more disappointed in camp being canceled than school.
Even though it’s not the same, Zoe can learn more or less all the important academic stuff from home. But we can’t give her the freedom she gets at camp—choosing all her own activities, interacting with kids and adults from all over the world, roaming around outside all day every day, swimming every day in the lake and doing archery and singing around a campfire and all the things. We can not recreate that experience. And especially when she’s in the house with us all day every day, she needs that outlet. I get why the camp made the decision and it’s probably the safest thing for everyone, but I am sad. Camp means so much to Zoe and to so many other kids and grownups. This is a big loss.
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If you’ve ever had a baby (or even if you haven’t), you might be familiar with the phenomenon of being so utterly exhausted you can barely function yet when you lie down to sleep, you just can’t. Or if you have migraines, or any kind of recurring pain, you might know the feeling of desperately needing to sleep to relieve your misery but hurting so much that you just can’t. Why are our bodies so contradictory and stubborn? What is that about? And why do doctors ask if you’ve been experiencing a lot of stress lately. When have I not been experiencing a lot of stress? Not that I am stressed 24/7, but it’s always there, lurking.
Today we went to a beautiful state park where I had never been. At the ranger station, I dropped my money into a fishnet that the ranger extended out the window. She returned the net to me with my receipt and a map.
The sun was shining and the temperature was about 70 degrees and it was a lovely day. A lot of other people thought so too and had also come to the park. I would estimate that about 80% of them were not wearing masks. In fact, we received some strange looks because of our masks. In Arlington, I feel like at least 90% of the people I see are wearing masks. I don’t know if that’s because Arlington is more densely populated or because the number of confirmed coronavirus cases here has passed 1,000, or because people in my community are getting their news from different sources. At one point on the trail in the park we passed a mom with two small kids. The mom said loudly, ostensibly to her daughter, “are you afraid of the masks?” And I took my mask off to smile at her. I said, “it’s ok, it’s just us,” as if we knew the girl or that made the slightest bit of sense. The mom said again, “she’s just really afraid of masks.” And hurried the kids along. The girl was not visibly upset. The mom seemed more upset, perhaps by the prospect of the girl getting upset? I don’t know what the girl’s (or the mom’s) history with masked people is, but I hoped for all of their sakes they would overcome the fear because masked people are not going away. And we were not wearing scary monster masks or those creepy giant face masks of Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan. We were all actually wearing cute, hand sewn masks in whimsical fabrics. Zeke was wearing a rainbow buff. But I still felt strange, as if we had done something inadvertently offensive.
So all the while as we were walking by the water and through the woods, my mind kept returning to the masks. Were we being over reactive? Were all these other people endangering their health and ours? Did any of us really know what was going on? What are the actual chances that anyone at the park was a carrier of the virus? I have no clue.
One thing I have learned (or relearned, really) during this pandemic is how people I know and love have significantly different styles of thinking about and reacting to unknowable questions and unsolvable problems. Some people like to speculate. What do you think is going to happen? Why do you think that? When do you think we will be able to go out normally again? I am sure that many people could come up with creative and perhaps profound answers to these questions. Maybe people who have this mindset are the ones that reimagine the future and make things better for humanity.
This is not me. I know that I cannot stand to speculate. I don’t know if this represents a failure of imagination or just an affinity for facts, but I truly do not want to discuss what may or may not happen two or four or six months from now until I have actual information in front of me with which to make decisions. And right now none of us (or at least none of the people with whom I talk to regularly) have any of this essential information. I’m not saying this information doesn’t exist, but I don’t know it and it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge.
For example, could you get coronavirus in a swimming pool? Would the chlorine kill it? Does it depend on who’s swimming in the pool? Is it possible to test all the kids arriving at summer camp? What about their families? If you test them when they arrive could they still be carrying the virus? How do you know if it’s safe to be in a house with people who you haven’t been quarantined with but who have also been quarantining for months? If you aren’t likely to get the virus from a surface, why is everything still closed? Could you get it in the ocean? Could you get it on the beach if you’re not close to anyone? What if you’re in a tent? I DON’T KNOW! Does anyone know? I don’t know if anyone knows. I don’t know when we will find these things out. So how can we make any decisions without knowing the answers?
Now I’m just getting riled up. I don’t know what exactly it says about me or my personality that I need information like this. Part of my feels like it’s paradoxical because a lot of my decision making is emotional, based largely on what my heart and gut tell me. I guess in these kinds of times, you can’t go with your heart and gut when people’s lives are on the line. I don’t usually make a lot of life or death decisions. Thank God.
These days are long and meandering. And even longer when you can’t sleep. Again tonight Randy and I had to tag team bedtime with Zeke several times because Zeke can’t sleep, and he is the most visibly upset about his insomnia of all of us. After Randy relieved me and I came back into our bedroom I ordered some melatonin for pickup tomorrow at the vitamin store. We used this a lot when Zeke was younger because he couldn’t sleep them either, but not because of pandemic stress. He just could never settle down. Then he outgrew that issue and we stopped the melatonin and all was well (at least on the sleep front) for a few years. I guess that returning to outgrown challenges requires revisiting old solutions. Better living through chemistry. In fact, over the 45 that I’ve been writing this, my migraine medicine finally, blissfully, kicked in. Maybe now I can get some sleep.
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Today was the day we had birthday cake for lunch.
Somehow in the surprising amount of hubbub yesterday—with Zeke’s birthday and my work demands and church demands and who knows what else—we forgot to have Zeke’s birthday cake. We asked him a couple times if he was ready for cake but he never was, and then he went to sleep.
So today we had to cajole him into pausing the Xbox, drag Zoe out of her bedroom, and force everyone into a festive mood so we could sing happy birthday and watch Zeke blow out the seven candle. (Anyone want a slightly used #7 candle?)
After dinner tonight (tuna melts, not cake). I attempted to have a discussion with the kids about why and how to restart (again) some kind of schedule and shared household responsibilities. You can guess how well this went. I said tomorrow is a new month and we need to shake off some bad habits we’ve fallen into so we can take better care of ourselves and our house.
Have I mentioned how this is hard? I could spend the whole day teaching Zeke. Or I could spend the whole day cooking and cleaning and taking care of the house. Or I could spend the whole day writing and editing and doing the work I’m paid to do by my clients, which are doing amazing work to heal the world. Oh and I could spend the whole day tending to my volunteer work or helping my community. But I haven’t figured out yet how to split myself into multiple people. Any ideas?
Zeke had fun yesterday but also had a hard time. I’ve realized his particular regression is a return to the mighty struggle he had with transitions when he was three and four years old. Although he had decided earlier that he wanted to go on a birthday hike, it was torturous to extract him from the Xbox to get him out of the house. Of course as soon as he was on the trail and climbing over rocks across the stream, he was ecstatic. So that was a good thing. But he seems to have lost the ability to remember that another activity might be as much fun or more fun that the one he’s currently doing. I am trying to remember exactly what we did to address this years ago, and whether the techniques you use with a preschooler will still make sense with a seven year old.
Meanwhile, this insomnia thing is real and has infected all of us. Zeke is still awake now, at midnight. He’s been struggling for hours to get to sleep. We’ve got to hit the reset button but I haven’t seen it anywhere.
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Yesterday it was my birthday
Paul Simon
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed
My life’s a mess
But I’m having a good time
This year I received birthday greetings from my neurologist, my dentist, my kids’ dentist, the Red Cross, William and Mary, Michaels, Starbucks, DSW, and District Taco. Oh, and a lot of people who I actually know and who love me!
I would not have guessed that a having a birthday while in quarantine could be so lovely, but it was. My people made me feel special.
A popular thing to do on Facebook is throw a fundraiser for a nonprofit you like. In the midst of a global public health crisis, it’s hard to pick one. The day before my birthday I invited people to do something to help their local food bank, or any organization that is helping people through the pandemic. Scrolling through all the people who listed the organizations where they had volunteered, donated food, or contributed money made me so ecstatic. A few people said they were turning over their stimulus checks to community food pantries, and they would think of me when they made the donation.
I had a Zoom birthday party, which was just as weird and silly as I expected. A Zoom party enables you to introduce people you love to each other, which is one of my favorite things in the world. Everyone said how they knew me, and it was cool to see so many people who were in our wedding on the screen together for the first time since our wedding video. For the party, I made a quiz about myself on Kahoot! which apparently was much more challenging than I thought. My sister won, which was not surprising. I think she won Zoe’s quiz too. She’s a clever one.
Then my parents and clever sister surprised me by appearing for a six-feet-apart sidewalk and parking lot party! My sister, wearing a mask, brought me a Wonder Woman balloon and a bouquet of flowers. My parents brought presents and my dad read a poem by Billy Collins, my favorite poet.
My husband brought home lunch from Pupatella, our favorite pizza place in Arlington. My family made me a delicious and messy cake. Our sweet next door neighbor wrote me a lovely card and gave me a journal covered with almond blossoms, which she stealthily left on our doorstep.
After I took a little nap while my family played Goat Simulator on the Xbox, we went for a hike at Scott’s Run, one of the parks we discovered since quarantine started. Like most of these hikes, it runs along the Potomac, and unlike most of the hikes, features a lovely waterfall. We were all wearing masks, but we didn’t see too many people, and those we passed on the trail stayed respectfully several feet away.
I hadn’t realized how much it had rained since the last time we were there, about a month ago. But clearly, it had, since the fallen trees Zeke climbed on were now separated from the shore by rushing water.
We opted not to swim out to recreate the picture. But we did put in 3.2 miles and, according to my Apple Health app, climbed 22 floors, also known as hills.
At home I took my second shower of the day, because you know I love to be clean, and I enjoyed a SamGram–a little FaceTime with my nine-month-old nephew, watching him grab toys and make noise and roll around and wiggle his little legs. The next best thing to snuggling.
Meanwhile Randy and Zoe made me non-dairy fettuccine alfredo at my request. If it were just me, I’d have the regular kind with cream, but since Randy is allergic to dairy and I think Zoe may be lactose intolerant, I wanted a treat everyone could enjoy. This involved them soaking cashews in water and blending them with some other ingredients. The alfredo sauce was not, perhaps, quite as creamy as what I’ve had before, but it was tasty and the whole thing was delicious because they made it for me.
I would give almost anything for this quarantine to be over–for enough tests to test everyone and a vaccine and leaders who are willing and able to take care of their people. But I wouldn’t have had my birthday any other way. Thanks, guys!
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(this is a slightly belated post for Friday, April 3 as I was too exhausted last night to write)
Surprisingly, this week went by fast. Although we still have absolutely no semblance of a routine, I guess we’re getting used to the new reality. Here’s what Zeke does every day: draws, builds with Legos, reads, does some math (usually with an app), practices martial arts or hikes (and now practices on his bike!), does a zoom or FaceTime call with family, and plays xbox. Here’s what Zoe does every day: schoolwork on her iPad, reads, practices martial arts and hikes or bikes, does some chores, talks with friends on FaceTime or Zoom, and explores the exciting worlds of Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. I won’t list what I do because it’s much more boring, but rest assured I keep busy.
The absolute highlight of my Friday was seeing Zeke put all his energy into learning to ride his bike, and finally succeeding. And Zoe was an amazing cheerleader and coach for him, as encouraging and kind as I’ve ever seen her with her brother. Most of the time Zeke was trying to ride, he was shouting bizarre phrases such as “Peruvian chicken!” and “I am the man!” He did a lot of yelling and laughing and running between attempts. I did a lot of running behind him trying to hold on as lightly as I could until he got some momentum going.
I fully believe that both my children learning to ride their bikes is a significant silver lining of this pandemic. Before everything was closed and canceled, they always had or made a million excuses about other things they needed to or would rather be doing than practicing on their bikes. Now they have no reason to be tired and they are excited to go outside but they can’t touch anything outside so biking is suddenly appealing. Someday, when all this is over, they’ll be able to ride their bikes to school and to friends’ houses. Can’t wait.
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When they first announced that our schools were closing because of the virus, it was only supposed to be for a month. The kids would return to school on April 14, after spring break. I can’t believe this decision was made only two and a half weeks ago. Already it feels like forever, since everything has changed and changed and changed again since then. But way back then, I naively thought that we might still be able to have spring break. We weren’t planning any exotic trips–just an overnight to Baltimore to visit the American Visionary Art Museum, explore the National Aquarium, and take the water taxi to Fells Point. And another overnight to Pennsylvania to spend a day at Hershey Park, which Zoe requested as a birthday present and where she and Randy were going to ride all the roller coasters. Still, we had something to look forward to.
Now our schools are closed for the rest of the school year, although perplexingly that’s not the case nationwide. And Virginians, along with residents of many states, have been ordered by the governor to stay at home unless we need to leave home on essential trips. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arlington has surpassed 100 and continues to climb. It seems like we are stuck at home for the foreseeable future. I just hope to God we can have our summer. Please don’t tell me otherwise right now. I cannot handle it.
I am feeling discouraged. My family will not be able to be together to celebrate my or my kids’ or my parents’ birthdays, or Easter, or Passover. We won’t be able to see friends or go to church.
Everything was glitchy today. Apps froze, devices crashed. Zeke collided with a bookcase and cut his arm. I cannot concentrate on writing anything for work when any children are in the room.
I do not intend to whine. I should just go for a walk. I feel this obligation to make dinner though, since we got takeout last night. I know it could be much worse and we are exceptionally privileged and lucky. But the indefiniteness of it all weighs heavily on me.
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I was just too tired to chronicle day 9. I’ll wrap it into day 10.
Amazon recently delivered to our house a five-pound box of plaster-impregnated gauze. In another time, I may not have granted Zeke’s wish for this stuff, which he used several weeks ago in his afterschool art studio to make donut sculptures. But now, hey, we have plenty of time on our hands so why not figure out what to make with five pounds of plaster-impregnated gauze.
Tonight I ordered him a dozen chisel-tip black Sharpies and a package of colored chisel-tip Sharpies. Apparently all the black Sharpies in the house have now been used up because Zeke has done a LOT of drawing over the past week. He has been watching Mo Willems’ daily drawing tutorials since school closed last Monday, and recently we added Grace Lin‘s and Jarrett J Krosockza‘s to the mix. He also watches instructional videos on a couple other YouTube channels. He told me that all the professional artists and illustrators use the thick black Sharpies (which we discovered are called chisel tip) so we figured he should have some.
At bedtime I asked Zeke what he would miss and not miss about school, since we learned this afternoon that Virginia schools will be closed for the rest of the school year. He said his afterschool art studio, his art class, his first-grade teacher, and seeing his beloved kindergarten teacher in the halls. Truthfully, it’s been kind of a rough year for him. All his best buddies from kindergarten either moved away, were rezoned to other schools, or ended up in other classes. He made a couple friends in his first-grade class, but none were as special as those from last year. More significantly, however, he’s struggled to deal with the disruptive behavior of a few kids in his class. There’s enough there to write another whole post about, but what matters is that Zeke has felt a lot of stress at school, and I think he’s a little relieved he doesn’t have to go back. He asked me right before he fell asleep if after the homeschooling is over he’ll be a second grader. I said I imagined so. Hopefully his second grade class will be more peaceful.
As a soon-to-be teenager, however, Zoe will suffer more from having to stay home, I believe. Friends are often your salvation when you’re 13, and Zoe has tight ones. I had already scheduled a Zoom call for her to check in with her squad from school this afternoon. But when we heard the news from Gov. Northam, she asked if she could start the call earlier, then commandeered my computer for the next three hours so she could commiserate and laugh with her friends. She came down to the kitchen twice during the call to get snacks. In terms of schoolwork, Zoe already has years of experience using the school-issued iPads and nearly two years of receiving and completing assignments online. She has been conscientious about her schoolwork so far, although it’s only been a week. I have no idea what the long-term plan will be or how she will respond.
The same can be said of everyone else right now, I suppose. I am feeling surprisingly sanguine at this moment. Today I’ve been angry, frustrated, disappointed, impatient, indignant, exasperated, and just really sad.
Yesterday we enjoyed a nice outing to Shenandoah. We did, in fact, stop at the Apple House and pick up lunch and apple cider donuts. Then we sat in the back of our van, which I had cleaned out and laid blankets down on, to have a little picnic in the parking lot. Then we walked through the woods. After a while we realized we might be on the wrong trail, but by the time we got back to the parking lot to scope out the right trail, we were tired and decided to go home instead. On the way home we listened to Dvorak‘s New World Symphony, which was Randy’s request and seemed fitting as we drove down the mountain. On the way to the park, we listened to a family playlist that we created that morning. I don’t know why I’d never thought of this before because we always have arguments about music in the car, even though we have a tried and true system of taking turns. I guess everyone’s coronavirus creativity is on fire, so I suggested we all add songs to the playlist and put it on shuffle. And it worked! No arguing. And some really funny juxtapositions of songs.
Today Arlington County announced that all parks, dog parks, playgrounds, fields, and basketball and tennis courts are closed. Trails and community gardens are “closed to groups.” The announcement said “exercise or garden alone.” In the past week we’ve seen tons of clumps of teenagers hanging out and playing basketball when we’ve been hiking or walking. We’ve seen little kids on playgrounds. Clearly none of these people were social distancing. I’m going to exercise my judgment that our family group of four can go on a trail together because A) we have been quarantining together and B) our children cannot “exercise alone” on a trail. I know we can work out in our living room, if we move the furniture, but we’ve got to get out of the house sometimes. And I am not a rule breaker by nature.
I am not a superstitious person either. But I keep thinking about how a few months ago I was thinking about what the advantages of homeschooling might be. I started contemplating it after talking with three different women in one week, coincidentally, who were homeschooling their kids. Unlike the stereotypical idea of homeschoolers, none of these families are super religious or conservative or anti-public school as a concept. All of them just realized that their kids’ needs were not being met by their schools, so they decided to do something different. And given the challenges Zeke has experienced in his classroom this year, I started thinking about how it would be nice if I could give him a less stressful environment to learn in. But at the same time, there’s a lot he learns at school that I cannot teach him, and there are things he enjoys, and there are kids there and, oh, professional educators. But now I’ll get my chance!
You Ask a Lot of Questions 