When I think back to how 2020 started, surrounded by friends and family, you would have thought it would be a great year. We were excited to ring in the new year, even though 2019 had been a fantastic year. 2020 would be the year Quinn finished Kindergarten, the year Knox started PreK, the year Banner went away to camp for the first long summer. It was the year we'd been waiting for to take our boys to Disneyland - a surprise we couldn't wait to see come to fruition! We all had high hopes for yet another great year together as a family.
I remember in early January, I had a student who was pretty anxious about this illness she was hearing about in China. She shared with me her concerns about this virus that was causing only a small stir in foreign lands. COVID-19 had been in the news, but I wasn't concerned. There had always been diseases and viruses that made the news but never really affected a global population, so I dismissed it personally while I still tried to support my student. In February, her fears became all of our reality as this "novel coronavirus" made its way to the U.S.
On Thursday, March 5th, Banner and Quinn had their Open House at school. As an aside, it's interesting to note that Banner's 3rd grade December performance had been postponed due to the music teacher being sick before winter break and took place on this night immediately before Open House began. I remember being so annoyed that Banner's performance had been cancelled in December... which I find quite ironic at this time. Anyway... Grandma, Big Boss, NaNa, and BeeBee came with the boys to share in the excitement as they showed off their work, introduced their teachers, and showed us where they sat each day. The following day, I joined Quinn for lunch at his school - in celebration of his upcoming half-birthday (since I couldn't join him for his real birthday earlier in September when Kindergarten parents weren't allowed to come to lunch yet). Little did we know, that would be the last time the boys were at school for the remainder of the school year.
Their Spring Break began the next day. I still had one more week of work before my Spring Break. On March 8th, we celebrated Purim at Temple, and I remember one of our friends telling me about a family he knew who was stocking up on toilet paper, paper towels, canned food, etc. I thought that sounded crazy, but he sounded pretty sure that's what we all needed to be doing. I was glad I had just bought toilet paper at Sam's a few days before. March 11th was a Wednesday, and we went out for Mom's birthday celebration all together as a family. On March 12th, I was sitting in a meeting after school when news reports started popping up showing that America was beginning to close down. Disneyland announced their closing date, and I remember feeling anxious that our June trip was in danger. Our principal shared that he was getting news about preparing students to leave for Spring Break the following day - arranging for them to take home their iPads and chargers in case we didn't come back. The whole school was in a tizzy of preparation, trying to get through the next day signing everything out to kids and shutting down the school in case we didn't return. Luckily, that was not a work day for me since I'm part-time, and I was at home with my boys on their "last day" of their Spring Break. Later that afternoon, March 13th, we got communication from their school district that Spring Break would be extended.
Well, you know the rest. Spring Break never ended, and we all did school remotely as school was closed "indefinitely." Yes, that word was horrible awful! I was feeling so very overwhelmed at what that meant for me as a parent and an educator. All of a sudden, everything was cancelled: Sunday School, soccer games and practices, preschool, camps, Disneyland, birthday parties, play dates, restaurants, movie theaters, play places, date nights, even the parks. We were told to stay away from anyone not living in our homes. How would we manage to keep the kids entertained at home without anything to really do? But I also knew this was short-term; by April, or May at the latest, we'd be back to our regular routine.
Ha! Here we are almost 10 months later, and our "regular routine" looks nothing like what it did before Spring Break. Our "regular" now involves a lot of pajama-wearing, Chromebooks, hardly wearing shoes, and incessant screen time. (Oh, trust me, there were limits and boundaries long ago, but that all went out the window about 7 months in when Mama couldn't fight that shit anymore!) We've adapted to being at home and are making the best out of our situation with at-home schooling, mask-wearing, and tons of technology.
Numbers of COVID-19 deaths are rising still - with this month being the worst of the pandemic yet. This year has been an utter nightmare for hundreds of millions of people. The global death toll right now is at over 1.79 MILLION. That's 1.79 millions families who are dealing with the loss of a loved one. That's 1.79 million times a doctor somewhere has had to handle the loss of a patient, share devastating news with a family who couldn't be with their loved one, worried they'd get exposed to the virus, too. This number doesn't even include the number of positive cases out there - the number of times a family worried about a family member, a person felt so sick they had to check in to the hospital or rush to the ER. And, I haven't even begun to talk about the number of people who have lost jobs, income, homes, mental stability... the list goes on. This dark time has been so hard for so many people.
So, when I say our year has been crazy, difficult, awful, frustrating, looooong, and daunting, I know that ours was actually bright and shiny compared to what it could have otherwise been. I'm speaking most definitely from a place of privilege. Neither Sam or I suffered any financial hit due to COVID; we have our health and strength; we have the means to provide our children with an education and opt out of in-person learning for at-home learning with a personal teacher to facilitate the learning while I'm at work; we have phones, computers, and Internet connections to help us stay in touch with friends and family; we have those friends and family who check in on us and are there for us when they know we need it.
Everyone is so ready for 2020 to be over, understandably so. But as "ever the optimist" (according to my sister with a big eye roll), I don't want to lose sight of the good things that happened during this time:
- Quinn learned to ride a bike, learned to swallow a pill, lost several teeth, and started PACE.
- Both big boys learned to tie their shoes on their own finally.
- Knox is a beginning reader!
- Knox said goodbye to his amber necklace (not necessarily a "good thing," but noteworthy).
- I got a new job working at the school I love!
- Sam ran a great campaign, and even though it ended in disappointment, we helped Collin County wake up a little more.
- We saved a LOT of money by not sending anyone to camp or extracurricular activities.
- Sam and I celebrated 11 married years together. During this unique year where people were cooped up together, we never got sick of each other and loved having each other nearby. I love that he works at home now, and while there was a learning curve about how to manage Zoom meetings and work time, we figured it out and learned to balance our work and family time.
- We were able to invest a lot in the house - exterior paint, fresh sod, new windows.
- We celebrated birthdays with VidHugs and creative parties (and 40th surprises!).
- Everyone learned to use technology in a whole new way, and we're now pros at Zoom, Google Classroom, Google Meets, FlipGrid, Nearpod, and VideoScribe. Every week has been a new way of teaching for me, and I'm creating guidance lessons in creative ways I've never used before.
- We've spent a lot of time outside, and even though we couldn't be close to others, it sure was nice to see more of our neighborhood out and about. Waving to other school families, meeting our neighbor's dog, finding inspiring messages in windows or in sidewalk chalk, seeing other families out and about trying to pass the time - definitely brought about the neighborly feeling of our community.
- When the boys couldn't have play dates, we found new ways to play. Virtual play dates online or on FaceTime, drive by waves and play time, playing collaborative video games, and Messenger Kids helped them stay in touch with friends near and far. The boys have played with older cousins who live out of town, with camp friends they haven't seen in a while, and Sunday School friends they wouldn't have usually spent time with outside of Sunday School. It's been very cool to watch those relationships build.
- We let go a little - for better or worse - and let the big boys go to the park alone (with walkies, of course) to ride bikes or scooters or meet friends to ride with.
- We got rid of Trump!
- Holidays were spent with a new creativity: fireworks on the ceiling, socially distanced sukkahs, Thanksgiving family Zoom, lighting the menorah on FaceTime and Zoom, socially-distanced trick-or-treating, our first seder at our house, and services for High Holidays online.
- We were able to sneak in a GFC family retreat before the lockdown, which made for some lasting memories. And once we were sheltering in place, GFC helped us with Greene Screen, Session Fun, and special age-appropriate Zoom meetings.
- We got away to Broken Bow.
- We made some really hard decisions again and again about whether or not to send our kids to school in person. But with each decision, we realized we had made the best one, and the kids have been thriving, even if it's not ideal. What IS ideal is that Emma became a part of our family - helping us stay sane while educating our kids throughout the fall semester.
- "Mi casa es su casa" has never been more true with our favorite neighbors and friends down the street. We have a "come right in" policy with the Waltmans, and the relationship we have with this amazing family is beyond a blessing. Graham and George have been coming to school at our house for 4 months now, and that will continue into the spring semester. Our bike rides and play time in the circle drive behind our house have kept Merideth and me sane when parenting little kids all day without anywhere to go was exhausting. Being able to have fun with friends nearby in our "pod" has saved all of us!
- Speaking of friends, we got socially creative by meeting close friends in the school parking lot for trunk dinners and evening chats.
- We had tons of down time, and our daily schedules were slowed wayyyyy down. This left plenty of time for play: trampoline fun, family bike rides, creating funny faces by mixing features of our family members and trying to guess whose eyes or nose or mouth it was; we used our phones to bring virtual animals to our house; we sent virtual hugs to family members; we baked and baked and baked. We watched outdoor movies, camped out in the den, flew kites, went on scavenger hunts, made forts, hiked, made slime, decorated cookies, made rainbow rice, turned our chins into puppets, swam at Grandma & Papa's, ran through sprinklers at Zaide & BeeBee's, baked challah with Amanda nearly all summer, had glow-in-the-dark dance parties, made a coronavirus piñata, went to the skate park, finished puzzles, enjoyed silent dance parties, played in the rain, learned to sew, made Play Doh, read in tents, painted our nails, played in shaving cream, charged down the Slip N Slide, made ice cream in a baggie, did science experiments, built Lego sets, and went on chalk walks.
- We were able to do curb-side pick up for groceries, restaurants, and library holds.
- We saved a lot on our dry-cleaning.
- I learned to give my kids haircuts!
- We made a commercial for Sam's campaign!
- We power washed our driveway, our sidewalk, our back patio.
- We found safe ways to venture out: Jurassic Quest, Pecan Creek Strawberry Farm, Zoo Lights, Radiance!, Luminova, Turner Falls, Go Ape!, Adventure Landing, fishing with Zaide, Escape Room, the Arboretum, the Fort Worth Zoo, Sci-Tech Discovery Center, Chuck E Cheese, National Video Game Museum, Yesterland, the movie theater all to ourselves
- We unexpectedly got a new car.
- We snuggled and cuddled and lounged every day - whether it was during our nightly novel reading (of which there were many: Bridge to Terabithia, Stargirl, Tuck Everlasting, Charlotte's Web, The One & Only Ivan to name a few) or watching an episode of The Goldbergs, or enjoying yet another movie night.
