The shock is wearing off. Reality is setting in.
It’s safe to say we are all sailing in unchartered territory. Certainly in my lifetime. And my parents’ too. Life amid the coronavirus pandemic is different and dynamic, with nonstop information coming at us, and life as we know it changing by the minute. My Bay Area county (and 5 neighboring ones) is about to announce a shelter in place plan to limit our comings and goings, interactions and inevitable spread of this virus.
As I write this, and apparently temporarily resuscitate my mommy-blog that had completely fallen by the wayside, I’m listening to my three young daughters work on their first round of “homework” that I created in our new “homeschool”. To them, the STEAM lesson I planned is a small shift from their norm — instead of creating leprechaun traps in their classrooms and with their classmates, they’re forced to create it at home with their sisters as their new learning contemporaries. But to me, it’s just the beginning of my newest identity shift where I add “homeschool teacher” to the many hats I wear on a given day.
I’ve been in nonstop texting and Facebook threads with other moms, passing ideas of schedules, lessons, chore charts, and so on, back and forth, using our collective brainpower to collaborate in this era of ever-changing reality. The texts and the Facebook threads are our lifeline not only to collaboration, but to survival. Where once we could grab a glass of wine at our local Whole Foods, settle into each other’s couches for book club or to watch the Bachelor, or take the kids for an impromptu playdate at the park, we are now within the confines of our own homes. Collaboration, humor and discourse are our virtual escape.
It’s this blurred reality that reminds me that my job, first and foremost, is to protect my children and help them make sense of the world. How my husband and I respond to the pandemic — the words we choose, the way we speak to each other and to friends and family on the phone, the attitude we carry — will have a direct impact on our children for years to follow. Whereas my parents’ generation still recalls where they were when JFK was shot, and my peers and I share stories of 9/11 and the days and weeks that followed, our children will talk about this. The pandemic. The shelter in place. They’ll ask each other what their experience was like, how they felt, what they remember.
People we know will likely become diagnosed with coronavirus… assuming testing is possible. It’s inevitable. And from what I’m reading, things could get worse before they get better. We are on information overload and things seem to be changing by the day. And so, while I sit at my dining table making color-coded schedules, scouring the internet for lesson plans, bookmarking online yoga classes, and preparing science experiments to continue exercising my daughters’ brains and bodies, I realize that my responsibility is even more-so to help them come out of this on the other side with a grounded sense of reality (somewhere between hysteria and denial) and to instill in them resilience, compassion and a burning desire to do their part to make a difference.
So when I put on that “homeschool teacher” hat each morning, I’ll remind myself of the bigger picture, too, and give myself some leeway to learn alongside my kids, to make mistakes, to know that some days will go better than others, and strive to be a positive role model for them amid pandemic-life. No, I’m not formally trained to teach long division (nor do I really remember it!); I’m not versed in strategies to help them move through the designated reading levels their classes follow. I’m now their homeschool teacher and I’ll certainly do my best. But, the first hat I wear is their mom, and I’ll do everything in my power to teach them, protect them, shelter them, guide them, and love them through each day ahead.
Yes, we are in a new “homeschool” situation, which is coupled with a double “work from home” environment between myself and my husband. Yes, they’ll complete math and reading lessons daily, practice their piano, engage in PE, and work on the virtual projects coming at us from their teachers, but we’ll also bake, watch movies, play games, have dance parties, organize closets, snuggle, and laugh. We’ll draw pictures and mail them to nursing homes where residents aren’t allowed to have visitors. We’ll FaceTime with friends and family. We’ll write letters and mail them to friends. We’ll learn new skills and take on new responsibilities.
We’ll adapt.
Because when we come out on the other side of this, I want my children to remember how it felt to be home, and to remember just how far the walls of our home and our hearts could stretch.
I have been waiting 365 days to write this blog post. 365 long, short, happy, sad, exciting, boring, fun, mundane, busy, slow, up and down days. 365 days that have each been unique… each their own snowflake within the year. Each day has tested me in its own way, making me better (even though some days I got worse first). When I walked away from a job I loved one year ago yesterday, I vowed to myself that I’d write and publish a post exactly a year and a day later reflecting on what I’d learned through my new role as a stay at home mom. Of course, at that time I didn’t predict that I’d spend the last four months of that year crippled by terrible writer’s block, with a head full of content and observations to share but an inability to translate them into shareable material. Perhaps that itself is the metaphor for my year…. a jumble of emotions and experiences too great to put into words. Or maybe, I’ve been so consumed by being home with my kids that I haven’t had a chance to reflect on what that has meant. Or maybe, the words haven’t come as easily as they once did. At any rate, I’m here now because I promised myself I would be, and that is a promise I intend to keep.
This list is in no way complete, but it’s a good start. I was sure that after a year in this new life I’d have some deep and profound thoughts about what this transition has been like. I thought that I’d have a true understanding of both sides of the field having been a working mom, a stay at home mom, and, as I do now, straddling the two. But the truth is… there is no truth. I don’t have a profound understanding, I just have my days. These last 365 gratifying, challenging, amazing days. We spend so much time fighting the “mom wars,” comparing our experiences to others, longing for something else or being completely rooted in where we are. Maybe for some the grass is always greener on the other side. Maybe the grass is perfectly green exactly where you stand. Or maybe the grass needs to be mowed, the laundry needs to be done, dinner needs to be made, work needs to be completed and the kids need to be bathed. It’s just grass, so do with it what you will.
Today my parents are celebrating their 46th wedding anniversary. WOW! This milestone is pretty incredible. Since getting married, they have moved completely from the East Coast to the West Coast with a 40 year “layover” in Arizona. They’ve gotten their advanced degrees, and started and retired from their careers with pretty significant accomplishments and accolades to boot. They’ve made countless friends, traveled a good portion of the world, and raised a pretty awesome lady (if I do say so myself!).
As the only child of two educator parents, I grew up in a household that valued kindness, social justice, education, and above all, love. We were a small but mighty unit of three (except for one special year when we had an exchange student from Brazil who made us a happy family of four. Hi sis!). My parents taught me independence at an early age which allowed me to forge my own path and to become my own person from from the get-go. One of their favorite stories to tell is about the first time they put me on a plane alone to visit my grandparents in Southern California. At the age of five, my parents took me to the gate, told me the flight was the same length of time as an episode of Sesame Street (which, to my disappointment I soon figured out did not mean that the airplane would actually show an episode of Sesame Street), and handed me off to the flight attendant to board the plane. I said goodbye and didn’t look back as I walked down the jetway and onto the airplane. “You didn’t look back,” they’ve told me time and again. And, I’ve always just laughed it off and held that moment as a point of pride. Until this week.
This week was my five year’s first week of summer day camp (another important part of my childhood). The first day, she gripped my hand tightly as the counselors introduced themselves and started a game for the kids to get to know each other. As she got more comfortable, I loosened our grip, first by standing next to her while we played, then sitting to the side while she played without me, and then giving her one last kiss as I walked away. And so, the second day I anticipated a similar progressive exit. But to my surprise, we got to the door of the camp building and she abruptly turned around, gave me a kiss and said “Mommy, I can go in by myself. I don’t need you to walk me.” Sure enough, she walked down the hall without turning back. And then I understood. I knew why that moment had been such an important milestone for my parents. They’d put me on a plane and sent me away for a week to stay with my grandparents; my experience with my own daughter was for 3 hours and was less than a mile from my house. But still, I finally understood. That independence that we so deeply try to instill in our children is a wonderful blessing, but man does it pull at your heart.
Living so far away from my parents for many years, I’d often felt jealous of my friends who had random movie nights with their moms or dinner out with their dads. But this last week, I saw my parents nearly every day. I took my dad to breakfast for a belated Father’s Day celebration. I spent a few days in my mom’s studio as she taught me to sew on her sewing machine. As a kid and even as a young adult, I never could have appreciated this time together. But now, I cherish it. I love that my dad can call us when he makes a dish for dinner that’s too spicy for them but knows we’ll like it, so he asks if he can bring it over. I love that my mom can take the time to teach me how to sew on a project that has taken months (even though it should have taken a few days) because we have the luxury of starting and stopping whenever we want to. I love that my kids can go to their grandparents’ house at 7am on a Sunday morning so my husband and I can get a little extra sleep. And I love that my kids are growing up with all of their grandparents (my parents and my mother-in-law) all only minutes away so they can be an active part of the kids’ lives and can attend sporting events, art shows, and special dinners out (and can watch the kids when we need to run errands or get in an occasional date night! Thanks everyone!).
So many of my own childhood memories revolve around summer break – from family vacations to sleep away summer camp to day after day of riding bikes from one friend’s house to another, jumping in swimming pools and setting up makeshift lemonade stands. Summer represents such a key part of growing up – a time to develop independence, to have adventures and explore, to continually redefine yourself. And here we are, at the doorstep of her first real summer break of many. We’ll spend the next two months playing, doing art projects, seeing friends, testing recipes, going on small trips, participating in day camp, and marking each milestone as it comes. Whether the first, or the last, or somewhere in between, this year has shown us how quickly we can rack up the milestones and see time pass us by. So, tonight when I put her to bed, I hugged her a little tighter, told her how proud I am of her, and marveled as she told me “Mommy, I just want to go to bed. Can you tell me that tomorrow?” (Perhaps really we’re on the doorstep of the teenage years… just a few years early!)
One of my favorite sounds when I wake up (nope, strike that, when I am woken up) in the morning is hearing my nine month old baby babble in her crib, sometimes to her reflection in the mirrored closet doors facing her crib and sometimes to her sisters who run to her room to say hello as soon as they hear her little voice. Her gibberish babble fluctuates as though she is actually talking but she doesn’t yet have the words to express herself.
It’s not just about having the words, though. I’m quickly learning that while my kids may not always have the words they need to express themselves, having the communication skills to utilize them is ever harder. For example, a few nights ago, my three and five year old girls were arguing during their cool down period before bed. As is typical, the five year old came to me to tell me all the things her sister was doing that bothered her. “Sweetie, you need to work it out with your sister. Use your words and tell her how you’re feeling,” I told her. So, she went back to their room to try to talk it out. However, this devolved quickly, as I overheard (eavesdropped) through the baby monitor in their room.
Finding Mom(me) 