One Day, Another Day

One day I was complaining about quarantine and home school and needing desperately to be in the world and then the next day my dad had a heart attack and was airlifted to a hospital in another city with no family nearby and another day he had all five of the major arteries in his heart bypassed and another day my mom could be with him again and he was doing okay and one day he went back home to recover even though fears have settled in on him and then the next day the ICU at the hospital where my husband works filled up with coronavirus patients and I thought, here we go, and then the next day a black man, George Floyd, was murdered by a white police officer 15 minutes from where I live and 8 minutes from the full ICU and then people, god bless them, took to the streets to shout out against police violence and the systemic racism that surrounds and encompasses our daily lives and then there were riots and fires and curfews and helicopters and we watched the city burn on TV and out our windows and we read about white nationalists and we became suspicious of every truck in the neighborhood driven by a white man, and there were many, so we put our trash cans in the garage and left all the lights on in the house and we did not sleep while our children slept and we called our neighbors and took supplies and food to pop up pantries and then one day school was over for the year so we took books back to the building, crossing a line of national guardsmen to park near the front door, one of them waved to us, we didn't wave back, and then one day it started to feel quieter again and we turned off a light or two in the house, but not in our bodies, and every day now the husband shows his badge to a soldier to get into the hospital to treat the virus sick and the windows in his office are boarded up but if he looks out a window on another floor he will see that his is one of only a few buildings standing in a sea of destruction and every day I am scrolling and scrolling the social media and wondering what is my role, what is my part, where will I be heard, and writing to people and calling some and making signs with my kids but feeling too scared to take those signs and those kids to George Floyd's memorial or to march with them because of the virus that I was complaining about to begin with, and quietly, my son takes Brown Girl Dreaming from my shelf and The Watsons Go to Birmingham too and he starts reading and it is another day.

Hard Things

My 3rd grader, Sam, is a motivated and excited learner. He loves new ideas and happily shares his latest school projects.

And yet, on this, his 36th day of doing school from home, HE IS SO DONE.

He used to initiate his daily work, check off tasks with a vengeance, and display his finished assignments with pride.

Now he requires constant cajoling, reminding, settling, and checking.

We have only two and a half more weeks of school for this year, and I have adapted the mantra We Can Do Hard Things. Especially for two and a half weeks.

Maybe an acronym will help: WCDHTFTAAHW. It's kind of long and difficult, but then again, so is the week.

What The Future Holds

I have no regrets about these years as a stay-at-home parent. It's been wonderful and meaningful and also hard. This year, in particular, I have found a sort-of balance with teaching preschool, volunteering in schools, and implementing daily healthy habits of body and mind.

Sometime in late February, though, I felt the urge to look for a job outside the home again. Something in education that would offer added purpose, challenge my intellect, and still allow for the balance it took me so long to appreciate. Maybe in academia? Maybe in a school? Definitely something with a teaching component.

Just as I was beginning to sort out my thinking on what a job like that might be, the pandemic took over and an opportunity to teach Kindergarten and 3rd grade appeared. I could not pass it up. Like, literally, passing it up was not an option.

So for eight weeks now I have been supporting my own kids in their at-home learning, as both a parent and a teacher. This has been rewarding and also terribly difficult, as anyone in the same position might attest. This has also thrown my outside-the-home job search into new relief. Do I want to start a new job when the likelihood of teaching 1st and 4th grades next year is so high? Maybe. Do I want to work from home while also teaching my motivated but also needy kids? Definitely no.

So I'm sitting here in limbo, like so many others, wondering what the future will hold. Hoping that things will become clearer very soon but not counting on that either.