Back to the new normal

Yesterday it was raining and for some brief moments it felt like it probably would have in the rightside up*. I would have felt a fair amount of dread about going back to school the next day (going back after spring break is always hard because there are no more breaks until the end of the school year – and this year that was an 11 week stint). I would have felt under prepared for what was coming, and I would have regretted squandering what I had. I would have chided myself on the state of the house, disappointed that I hadn’t purged all the shit like I’d planned to. I felt all the things I normally would have felt, and even though they were mostly negative feelings, I kind of reveled in them. Truly, I felt almost normal.

But there was a competing feeling, that voice whispering a futile reminder: you were supposed to be going back tomorrow, the shelter-in-place was supposed to be over. I can still go back and feel the shock of confirmation that we were missing just two simple weeks of school. It felt unfathomable. And now we’re officially out for four more weeks, and everyone is talking like we won’t go back at all, even though our district is too cowardly to make the official announcement. (Internally we are speaking like is has been formally ordered – per the governor and state superintendent’s announcements – but parents have not received that messaging yet). It’s crazy to think that three weeks ago the suggestion that we’d never go back would have been met with total denial. Nobody would have believed it. And yet here we are. What a difference three weeks can make.

{And I suppose that is why our district is not saying it outright yet – because they want to give people time to digest the fact that we’re out four more weeks before they bring the hammer down on hope for the remaining seven.}

I’m struggling with what to do with my kids during this time. I’m not so stressed about the schooling they will miss – I know they will be fine with their post-bachelor-degree parents and the copious resources at our disposal. But I hate the idea of them sitting in front of screens all day. And yet, what else do I offer them? It’s one thing to request imaginative play a couple of hours a day, but for its entirety? For a week? For a month? And now that our outside adventure time has been whittled down to a mere hour spent wandering the neighborhood (where the only adventure is avoiding the dog shit that suddenly is EVERYWHERE – I guess pet owners don’t need to clean up after the dogs in the times of coronavirus) there are even more hours every week to fill.

I don’t know how we’re going to get through this. There are SO MANY HOURS before then and now. My son is already struggling so much.

{And as a teacher, I’m terrified to go back to school in the fall and try to engage students that haven’t sat in a desk for six months – many of them facing food scarcity and getting no breaks from the trauma of their home life.}

So yeah, just trying to reconcile the two different feelings, one of almost-normalcy and one that feels like things will NEVER be the same again. I’m sure the latter is closer to the truth, and I’ve mostly accepting that. Which is probably why I feel so bad right now.

*I’ve taken to thinking of our new coronavirus reality as the upside down, mostly so I can refer, in my head, to what I think of as my “real life” as the “rightstide up.” The parallels aren’t really there, I know, but it’s working for me right now.