Not a Wasted Word

My daughter has a cold, so we kept her home from camp today. Actually, she had a sore throat on Tuesday afternoon, but we assumed it was the heat and her mask and the exertion at camp after so many months home (she is a loud talker like her mom). Also, her allergies have been bad, so we chalked it up to all of that.

Wednesday she had a bit of a stuffy nose, but the sore throat was gone and we again assumed allergies, gave her an extra dose of antihistamines and sent her on her way.

But this morning she really didn’t feel good. Her stuffy nose had gotten a lot worse and she had a cough. So we decided to keep her home. She was super bummed because they were going ride the new Ferris Wheel in Golden Gate Park today, but you can’t send your kid to camp with a cold during Covid.

It’s our first brush with mild illness since all of this started, and it was a reminder that it’s going to be really complicated once school starts and more viruses are making the rounds. I’ll be teaching in person so it’s not like I can just work from home if my kids have symptoms that normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but now required don’t show up at school. My husband will have more flexibility, and hopefully with a kid home who isn’t very sick (not requiring constant care), the whole day won’t have to be considered a wash (which used to be the case – if he wasn’t at his office he couldn’t count the hours, even if he really did do work).

I snagged an appointment through Kaiser this morning to get her tested so we’ll have some piece of mind by Monday when we plan to send her back (assuming she feels well enough by then, which I think she will). In the meantime, I’m glad we didn’t have much planned for this weekend.

I didn’t go down to work today like I had planned, because the Covid test was across town and by the time we went there and back it didn’t make sense to drive down to work. Instead I’m getting some of tomorrow’s errands run and deciding if I want to drive down tomorrow to finish packing or just spend all of Saturday down there, so I can push through until I’m done. Saturday is probably the better move but I’m loathe to do it. I just want to get it done and put it behind me but it’s taking longer than I thought, and it’s totally depleting me in ways I didn’t expect.

I’m honestly not quite sure why I’m having such a hard time with it… I’m just trying to plod through and not think too much about why I leave every day feeling so bummed out. (I’m not against exploring the feelings but I’m honestly not sure where to start – I think it’s a lot of things, like a the reminder of how long my commute is and how wiped I am after spending the day away from home, about how frequently I’ve been asked to move rooms, how much stuff I’ve purchased that I really didn’t need, how isolated I sometimes feel at work being the only foreign language teacher, how isolating teaching is in general, how I’m so relieved and even excited to be teaching back in my classroom next year but how complicated those feelings of relief are when taken in the broader context). So I guess I have some ideas of why it’s bumming me out but I think they are so complex and multifaceted that just letting time manage most of them is probably the best course of action. It probably doesn’t help that I’m coming out of one of those more depleting 16 months of my life.

There are ways I remember the tunnel. They aren’t necessarily distinct, and I don’t always remember them in order. They overlap too, because each designation is based on something specific (seeing friends, politics, school, public health guidelines), but the ways in which the actual timelines overlapped I can only vaguely recall

One important way I think about different parts of the pandemic is how we escaped the confines of our 1,200 square foot house. Getting outside was a big part of our pandemic.

I remember Lollipop Walks, in the early days of shelter-in-place when the play grounds were closed and we only left the house for essential shopping. Every afternoon the kids and I would walk the same loop in our neighborhood, and we started the walk by picking out a lollipop.

We weren’t even wearing masks when we took the first Lollipop Walks (the CDC had told us not to), and I remember how adding them later made it harder to enjoy the lollipops. But we made due. Lollipop Walks were the only way we ventured outside, because the backyard was still a disaster and other public outdoor spaces were closed down. I remember Lollipop Walks fondly, though I also recall sending texts to my friends lamenting the fact that even a f*cking lollipop wasn’t enough to get my kids out of the house without copious complaints. Eventually we added a second, longer loop, to our Lollipop walk repertoire, and that felt momentous.

After Lollipop Walks came Back Yard Play Dates. If the spring of 2020 was Lollipop Walks, then that summer was Back Yard Play Dates. We were lucky to easily fall into two pods – three friends for my daughter and one friend (and his sister) for my son. We packed the shed with art supplies and toys and I bought mats and outdoor rugs and everyone wore masks as they did most of the things they would have done inside, except they did them outside. Playgrounds were still closed at this point, so Back Yard Play Dates were an incredibly treat.

That summer we also spent a LOT of hours in a big park near our home. The playgrounds were definitely closed, but the outdoor spaces were not. We’d pack up lunch and layers and I’d camp out on a big log while the kids ran amok all around me. We bought walkie talkies so they could venture farther and farther afield. Somehow we had barely ventured into that park before the pandemic, but last summer we explores its every nook and cranny. That park will always hold a special pandemic place in my heart.

Then came Playgrounds! In late fall (mid October?) the playgrounds opened and oh my god it was like Christmas came early. Every afternoon friends would descend on the Playgrounds, squealing with joy that there was finally something to do. Kids got to invent their makeshift games while parents got to attempt makeshift conversations. Everyone was rusty but we made due. The Playground orgies lasted well into winter. It was March when we finally got tired of descending upon the Playgrounds – I remember telling someone I had gotten my vaccination appointment there, and chatting with cautious optimism about what summer might hold, or (and here is where we really held our breath) the fall.

The spring of 2021 is harder to categorize. There isn’t the one thing that makes it stand out. As older family members were vaccinated, people’s suffocatingly tight social circles began to loosen. We started seeing my parents inside. In late spring, when the CDC changed its guidance and more friends were fully vaccinated I started seeing friends outside without a mask. This spring is when things started to feel more normal, or at least started to feel like soon they would. We signed our kids up for camp and were promised a full return to in person learning in the fall. Our kids enjoyed 10 days of in person learning in May. My daughter “graduated” from 5th grade. We attended some events for their new schools. We started thinking ahead toward summer and a new school year.

And now it’s summer, with its full day camps and special events. It’s going to go fast, I know that for sure, and I don’t think at the end I’ll remember pandemic specific about how we spent our time. The very prescribed way we got outside during different parts of the pandemic though, those will always be a part of how I remember the tunnel. It was the way we filled our days, it was the way we saw friends and stayed sane. It was really, really important.

How did you get outside during the pandemic?

I started packing my classroom yesterday. I got six boxes finished. I would have packed more but I had to spend a couple hours taking apart the binders of my students… from two years ago.

My students each have a 1-inch binder that stays in my class. This has been the case for many years – more than I can remember. They keep a notebook, worksheets, and other papers in it. They also keep a pair of ear buds and their current free reading novel in a pencil pouch affixed to the three rings. Usually they take their own binders apart at the end of the year – recycling (or taking home) the paperwork and throwing away (or keeping) the binder. Of course when they went home in mid-March of 2020, they assumed they’d be back in three weeks, and so they left their binders. Those binders that they never came back to get have been sitting on my shelves all these many months; I never dealt with them because I wasn’t teaching in my room and didn’t need to. Honestly, I didn’t want to.

Now, of course, I need to, and it doesn’t matter whether I want to or not. So yesterday I sat down with a stack of the binders and started taking them apart. Each one was a tiny time capsule, with all the papers we had been working on tucked between the doodles and notes of its owner. The little prizes they had one were in the pencil pouches of many students, pressed up against the novel they were reading (they were going to make trailers in groups and share them with the class). It’s been a long time since I’ve come up against such a strikingly complete vestige of the before times, and I kept catching my breath as I noticed little details that felt so familiar and yet so foreign.

Yesterday afternoon, as both kids played their video games after camp, I got on a bus headed in the direction of the dojo. It was the first time I’d been on public transportation since shelter-in-place began so many months ago. At the dojo, I practiced martial arts for the first time sans mask with other community members who are also vaccinated.

I know the pandemic is not over, even here with our high rates of vaccination, but it definitely feels like we can see the light at the end of this tunnel. Today I was struck by the juxtaposition of the remnants of when this all began, and the first tentative steps into a future where this is behind us.

I suppose it’s easy to focus on the two ends of the tunnel, when really we should be doing the hard work of muddling through what happened in the middle. The middle part is harder to remember, because it was dark and confusing and sometimes terrifying in there – none of which make for reliable recollection. But it’s important that we do our best to revisit that murky middle, to not just focus on the two ends of the tunnel – as mesmerizing as both may be. The disorienting dark of the first weeks and the blinding light as we come out of this – it’s easy to focus on those moments – they captivate us. But what’s really important is what we learned as we stumbled through the tunnel, unsure of where we were going, terrified of what our lives would look like on the other side.

I don’t want to forget the middle, which means I need to take the time to remember. Perhaps that is a good project for this summer.

The past two weeks have been busy. Very busy. A lot of what was planned was really fun, but it didn’t leave for much free time.

{Some of what kept us busy: pizza movie night in the garage with my son’s friend, our daughter’s family birthday, hosting daughter’s friends in the backyard and garage, water park Saturday x 2 (I got reservations for consecutive weekends in case the first was too cold to go, but both Saturdays were warm enough so we went twice!) camp orientations over zoom, eight hour marathon photo book making afternoon/evening, end of year events at my school}

Now that I am officially done with the school year, and both my kids are in camp (my daughter starts today too! Woot!) I will suddenly have A LOT of time without kids: 9:30 to 2:15, Monday through Friday. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do with that time.

Of course I’ll be packing my classroom, and honestly that might be all I do this week because by the time I drive down there and give myself time to drive back, I will only have about four hours to pack. If I run, it will be even less. Honestly, there is a part of me that is relieved I have a concrete way to spend that time, because if I didn’t I’d be floundering. What do people who don’t work, but have kids in school full time do all day? (Pre-pandemic obviously). I mean yeah, I’d do some deep cleaning, and probably work out more or longer but then, what? I supposed my kids wouldn’t be in aftercare so the “school day” would be shorter (closer to what I’m looking at right now with camp), but still, that is A LOT OF HOURS to fill. I’ve always wondered what parents who don’t work but have kids in school from 8:30 to 2:30 do during that time (I’ve never had a friend who didn’t work once their kids were in school, so I haven’t had anyone to ask – I guess they probably have side hustles or other personal projects to work on).

You may be thinking, well what do you during your crazy long summers – I don’t get eight weeks off! – must be nice!) and that’s a fair question. I usually spend the first weeks doing some projects around the house that have been languishing for months. My house is usually in various states of disrepair so I can burn a full week just going through my kids old clothes, organizing the garage and deep cleaning the floors (which won’t have seen even a mop since the previous summer). I usually also schedule a bunch of appointments (that is next week, when I’m getting my teeth cleaned, my allergy shot and a chiropractic adjustment) in late June, because it’s hard to get that stuff during the school year (I can’t just take a “long lunch” when I’m teaching).

Then, about two weeks after the my school year ends, we head to St. Louis to visit my family. And sometimes we have another trip planned after that. Sometimes I sign up for a week or two of professional development (almost never paid – usually I pay out of pocket to attend) in July. At the end of summer, I’m usually back at work before we officially start in mid August. So I usually only have 2-3 weeks of “free time” when my kids are in camp and I’m not traveling or in a training. That tends to go by really fast.

This year is a little different obviously, and I’m going to have to figure out how to spend some free time. It’s the absolute best quandary to be hitting my head against, to be sure. Still, it has me rather perplexed.

{Honestly, the free time has never freaking me out as much as this summer which I think speaks to how over extended I’ve been for the past 15 months. When you quite literally have NO free time, finding even an hour of it a day can be very disorienting. I keep trying to remind myself of that.}

We do have some fun things planned, so it’s not like I have eight weeks of kid-in-camp to burn (they are only in camp for seven weeks total, actually and three of those weeks only one of them is in a camp – like last week) . I also need to pack my room in June and unpack it in August (and we start August 11th this year, which feels so, so early). So maybe it will go faster than I think. There is certainly PLENTY to do around the house, if I were so inclined (but ugh, I’m really not – I’m so sick of my house!). I’d like to let myself enjoy a little bit of down time. I haven’t taken a day off since the pandemic started because what was I going to do or where was I going to go? (And of course teachers get weeks off during the year so it’s not like I worked all that time.) Still, I’ve been on double duty working at home while my kids learned at home for an entire academic year so… some down time would be nice.

I’ll definitely find a book to read (any recommendations?) and I’d love to find a show to binge watch at night (again, any recommendations?). Soon I’ll be finding out what classes I’m teaching next year and at least two should be new (4th and/or 5th grade Spanish which I have never taught), so I’ll have some work stuff to keep me busy. If I were my husband I’d be buying some crazy video game that I could play for 60+ hours but I don’t really like video games so… Maybe I’ll blog more, but lately it feels like I’m just shouting into the void. I’m not really sure if blogging is where I want to spend my time, even when I have more of it.

I’ve had people ask why I put my kids in camp if I’m home during the summer. My answer is that they are happier humans when they have something to do. This year I’m doing it because that is still true, and we also (a) all need some time away from each other and (b) they need practice managing a longer, structured day with outside-our-house expectations. They had 10 days of in person learning last year, so they need to ease into a full academic day this fall. Camps are going to help do that.

They are also going to give me some much needed free time. Now I just have to figure out how to use some of it.

What do you do when you have free time? Can you even remember?

Monday and Tuesday I held my final zoom meetings in each class. Wednesday I waved goodbye to each 8th grader as they drove through our Promotion Celebration. Thursday I refilled the Soak n’ Wet bucket over and over as the kids drenched their teachers during field day. Thursday afternoon (all afternoon – from 1pm to 9pm!) I drank and commiserated and celebrated with my colleagues, as we looked back on an absolutely insane year. Friday I posted my grades, submitted paper work, and sent some emails.

This morning I deleted all my weekly tasks from the Reminder app on my computer and switched off all the alarms that reminded me of my scheduled zoom meetings. I took the final set of grade and attendance sheets off my clipboard and stored them away with the dozens of other sheets from this year. Then I tried to recycle them but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m sure by next week I’ll be able to toss them away.

Summer has officially started. It always takes a while to really unwind and get into the head space of summer, but I think that will especially be the case this year. In the past just being home helped my brain recognize the school year was over, this year I don’t have even that (because I’ve been home for 15 months)!

But next week I’ll be back in my classroom, this time packing. Last Thursday my principal told me that I have to move rooms, that I have to pack up a classroom I haven’t taught in for 15 months and unpack in somewhere new. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement.

I still have a lot of big feelings about it, but I’m trying to focus on the most positive possible outcome – that teaching from a different room (which will be a very different space), will help me reset when I return next year. I don’t want to teach in all the same ways I used to – I’ve learned too much! – and I hope being in a whole new environment will help me to really do that.

Today we’re heading to the water park for some fun in the sun. While I’m there I’ll surely be thinking about packing my classroom, but at least I don’t have to think about my next meeting on zoom, or the next topic I have to cover, or the next project I have to prepare, or the next assignment I have to score. For that I am endlessly grateful.

How will your summer look and feel different?

I was going to write a post tonight – a real one! – but instead I sewed a bunch of patches on my son’s ki for martial arts camp that starts this week. Sewing iron-on patches is just the worst.

You know what else is the worst? The wind. I. am. so. sick. of. the. wind.

I’m sure it only bothers me because we’re still trying to do a lot of stuff outside (with our kids, and their friends, who cannot yet be vaccinated). I’m so tired of the wind whipping away food, art, projects, toys, whatever we’re trying to manage.

I know the weather in Northern California is lauded, but the weather in San Francisco sucks. I’m used to commuting to the peninsula where the fog is held back by the mountains and the wind is calmed by the same – where it sometimes feels warm! Up here is just wind and fog and cold all summer long. It’s two weeks before summer has officially begun I am officially over it.

What weather are you over?

My daughter turns 11 in a week. We celebrated with friends yesterday because one of her crew is out of town for the next two weeks.

We went down to my mom’s friend’s house to swim. It was low key event but they had a ton of fun because they hadn’t swam in a year. The weather was perfect – warm enough to stay in the water but not so hot that you had to stay in the water. We really lucked out on the weather.

I made goody bags. I think I actually kind of love goody bags (I feel like this is an unpopular opinion). I just love putting them together and making them fun. I love finding the perfect treasure to fit the theme. I love watching the kids’ faces when they see what’s inside.

This year I got them lots of self care products. They are all hitting puberty and some of them are struggling with the new requirements of self care, so I got them lots of different kinds of (travel sized) face washes to try, along with a towel head band and face mask and other fun stuff.

I don’t know how many goody bags I’ll be making for my daughter and her friends. I don’t know how many birthdays she’ll be officially celebrating this way. I’m glad my son will still need my goody bag making skills for a while longer.

I’ve been very cognizant lately of how much I enjoy being the parent of older kids, and also how wistful I am for the days when they were younger. I think a part of me realizes how incredibly short this sweet spot is, and how much I’ll miss it when it’s gone. I guess much of life is living with the understanding that everything changes, of accepting it even as you fail to really recognize it.

In the meantime, I’ll take special care when I’m preparing the goody bags.

One thing I want to continue long after the need to social distance has ended is hosting outside. Having guests is stressful for me because my house is never guest-ready. Never. Usually my house requires multiple hours of pick up before I can even get to the cleaning phase. I do NOT invite people over much because the effort required to make my house presentable is not (to me) worth the fun of having someone over.

But when we host outside, that isn’t an issue! I really like hosting outside. We have a lot of space in our backyard (even if it’s not particularly nice space), and I love keeping the chaos of guests outside, away from the house. It is a pain to take things back and forth but that is really the only negative. (Our back stairs are not safe (they need to be torn down) so I have to walk to the front of the house, through the garage and back down the hall to get outside, but it’s the same walk I take to our bedroom in the old tenant’s unit so I’m used to it).

When kids are allowed inside again, I will definitely try to keep a large portion of “play dates” outside. Yes it’s always windy, and frequently foggy, but the weather almost always allows for being outside here. So I want to keep hosting there.

That is one of the reasons we got a new outside table. Our picnic table was in ROUGH shape. It had been out there since we bought the place, and it was falling apart. When I finally went to take it apart (we couldn’t get it through the hall to the front of the house without dismantling it) I was able to just pull it apart with my hands. That is how rotted the wood was. It was a big table, and we got a lot of good use out of it (especially this past year!) but it was time for it to go.

We got a new table from IKEA. We buy almost all our furniture from IKEA and I wasn’t looking to do that again, but this table is simple, fits our needs, and got good reviews on Wire Cutter so we went for it. We just put it together today. It seats four with benches and another four when the leaves are up. We got folding chairs for the extra seating.

We put all of it together today. We stripped two screws on the first chair we tried to build but otherwise it all came together nicely. (I got approximations of the screws from a hardware store because I REALLY don’t want to drive back to IKEA! We’ll see if they do the job.) It’s exciting to have it (almost) all ready!

Next weekend, when the grandparents come over for our daughter’s family birthday, all of us can sit at the table! This is a big deal. We don’t have any table in our house that fits eight – we only host for our kids birthdays when both sets of grandparents come at the same time – so having one for outside it awesome. And when we bring down the leaves it has a much smaller footprint than the previous picnic table.

We even got a cover for it so it will (hopefully) last a lot longer.

We have a big (obscenely big for San Francisco IMHO) backyard and it’s so nice to use that space for hosting. Our house is not that big and it’s never clean, so using our outside space makes a ton of sense.

Yay for our new table!

They figured out who in my class shared the zoom links with the racist asshats who came in and said the horrible, ugly, hateful things. The kid got a three day suspension.

I’m pleasantly surprised. I want to learn more about how they figured out who it was. It was not the student I suspected, the student that the circumstantial evidence suggested. In fact it was the student that my colleague suspected (there were other incidents in another set of classes and the number of students in both my class and the others was relatively small), but no evidence from the incident in my class to support that it was this kid. I want to know if the quick log in from the former student helped them figure it out, or if it was something else in entirely. I want to know who they sent the link to that came in and said all the hateful, racist things. I want to know a lot, but I have to wait until I’m on campus to find out and I’m not sure when that will be.

In the end they not only had zoom’s security team working on it, but they also called in the police. I’m wondering if there were more incidents after mine (which was after the incidents in the other classes). It seems like they were resigned to the fact that they couldn’t figure it out, and then all of the sudden they knew who it was. I’m so isolated as an elective teacher at home. I’m always the last to know.

The day before they figured it out my principal and the school’s counselor came into that class’s zoom and did a restorative Jamboard session where kids could share how the incident made them feel. I appreciated the time we spent on it, but it was clear we all wanted some justice. It’s nice to know the person who subjected us to all that will be facing consequences.

Yesterday was significant for other reasons. We attended our daughter’s 5th grade promotion over zoom. Today is her last day of in person learning. It is the last time I will drop them off at their school, a school I spent copious amounts of time at for PTA and other events. It’s a good school. I know I’ve had a complicated relationship with it, but it served our children well. There are a lot of really good people at that school, and I will be sad to say goodbye. I have gift cards for many of them and I’m afraid I’ll cry when I deliver them tomorrow. Especially to the two secretaries, who were nothing but helpful, supportive and kind to me as both a parent and a PTA board member. (I’m crying as I write this and re-read it.)

I don’t think anyone knows we won’t be back next year. They probably assume my daughter is going elsewhere for middle school (it’s a K-8 school but the middle school is notoriously low performing and a large portion of the 5th grade class leaves for other 6-8 middle schools), but they probably think my son will be there next year in 2nd grade. I don’t even know if his current teacher knows he’s going to another school. I just haven’t had the heart to tell anyone yet.

I have a lot of big feelings about it. They are complex and complicated and I don’t know if I’ll ever sort them out. I probably won’t, and that’s okay. Feelings don’t have to be teased apart, not always. But it’s still hard. I’ve been a very active and involved parent at that school for six years. I know the people. I know the community. Next year I’ll be at two schools I know nothing about, where I’m a stranger to everyone. It’s going to be an adjustment, one I think I’m ready to make. I hope I’m ready.

My kids still have zoom school on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, but tomorrow feels like their last day. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye.

I think the wave has finally crested with work, and things will get easier moving forward. I sent out the final newsletters, and graded the final projects. Tomorrow my students take a test and it’s the last big grade going into the grade book. Next week we continue reading a graphic novel on a site where all the activities are already made and the students can’t pass to the next chapter without getting a certain percentage of the activities correct. There is no prep and it’s very easy to “score.” We’ll be doing that all next week and it will be glorious. At this point I can just ride the wake of the wave to the last day of school.

I feel like I should have more to say about all of it. About ending this year that for me was almost entirely spent in distance learning. I feel like I should have something profound to say. But I don’t right now. All I can say is that I’m bone tired, tired in my body and my soul in ways I don’t remember ever being. I am so excited to return to my classroom next year, it makes me giddy just thinking about it. But before that happens I need to take a long rest. I hope the summer provides that. I think it will.

I knew this was going to be a week, but wow is it a week.

I was up until 1:30am on Monday and 2am on Tuesday. Wednesday was relentless. The plan is to go to bed “early” tonight (11pm) and hopefully feel better in the morning.

The rest of the week is better. It’s not good, but better. I just want to get to June 11th, but I think even June 1st will be a big improvement.

I keep telling myself it would be worse if things were “normal”. There would be SO MUCH more to do, so many more events to show up to. This is the easier scenario in a lot of ways, except for the grueling days of no childcare. My kids are done next Wednesday. The last 10 days of school are going to be rough.

But we’ll get there. Eventually. I’m counting down.

And since I can’t write anymore, here are some picture of Bilbo.