With COVID-19 dominating our life for the past 22 weeks now, I’ve often wondered how history — or the people who write history, anyway — will describe this segment of time. Of course, we have no way of knowing how long life will be continuing on its COVID-dominated trajectory, and who knows? Though it’s incredible to ponder, maybe in the grand scheme of things, this period won’t end up being all that significant or all that long. 

It’s easy to think about extremely significant events that have lasted longer — wars, occupations, dictatorships, the Great Depression, that sort of thing quickly comes to mind — yet it’s also worth noting that there have also been meaningful events, like assassinations, that were shorter than COVID (in that they’ve occurred in a shorter period of time) but still had a significant effect for years or decades to come.

So — situated between a historically-significant, political assassination, and a war, how significant will history treat COVID-19? 

In the very beginning of shelter-in-place, I remember a neighbor positing how significant this COVID era we’re living in would become, saying that surely this “would be included in future history books” that my daughters’ kids would be reading. It was jarring to think about — not least because the idea that my kids could have kids of their own one day is CrAzY! — but then also because yeah, maybe he’s right. Maybe this is all going to be a pretty big deal. 

I mean, c’mon. It’s a huge deal now; it’s mentally impossible for me to think that this period somehow could be insignificant in the coming years and decades. 

It’s fascinating to consider what could be written about what we’re living through. What will be the central focus: 

• the millions of people who have been infected? 
• The hundreds of thousands of people who have died? 
• The economic meltdown and sequelae that has resulted in businesses being forced to close (or to significantly reduce or suspect operations temporarily)? 
• The medical professionals who have been unfairly tasked with confronting this pandemic with a PPE shortage, who have gotten sick or died as a result? 
• The astounding ineptitude of our federal government in managing the crisis? 
• The socioeconomic disparities, particularly related to race and class that are already entrenched in this country (in terms of a number of quality-of-life indicators), that have been even further deepened as a result of who has or hasn’t gotten COVID (and who has or hasn’t died from it)? 
• How strangely (and miraculously, TBH) that children have been mostly spared from the ravages of this disease? 

I mean, seriously, the sky is the limit here. The possible narratives set to the COVID backdrop are as diverse as the universe is broad. Read any human interest story in the news each day, and you’ll get what I’m talking about. 

And because I’m a parent, and that’s my primary job right now, my mind often wanders to how children will make of, and remember, all of this once it’s behind us: my own kids, of course, but more importantly, all children in general. Specifically, I wonder about the stress, the social-emotional stuff that’s important for children’s growth and development, that may be affected. This isn’t to say anything of the possible achievement gaps that may last as a consequence of the interrupted or altered schooling that kids and families are enduring because hot damn, that’s a whole other set of factors worth examining and deserves its own, separate 1,000-word+ essay. 

I mean, good grief: remember that the AAP initially said that children absolutely should be returning to school in the fall because their health — COVID notwithstanding — was on the line? It wasn’t until days later that they backtracked, seemingly realizing after the fact that oh, yea, kids’ social-emotional needs are important, but so, too, is their physical health. I’m no expert here, but I imagine that if your child is infected by a novel coronavirus for which there is no cure and about which we know and understand little, I have a feeling that most parents would want to focus their efforts on getting their child physically well, as soon as possible, before they begin entertaining how to meet his or her social-emotional needs. 

Everyone says kids are resilient, and I agree to an extent, but I also can’t help but wonder how COVID may influence a generation of children’s developmental years in the same way any other significant, high-ACE-score trauma would.   

It goes back to my original question I present in the title: how in the world is all of this gonna go down? 

Of course, how it’s all going to go down — or how it’s going to be remembered or documented — will vary wildly. As Black Lives Matter has amplified over the past few months, people’s life experiences can be radically different in part by virtue of their skin color. A real-life, relevant example: where I live, particularly early in the pandemic, Latinx populations here (and in particular, on the east side of the city) were constituting the plurality of our COVID-19 cases, even though Latinx isn’t the majority population. It’s a profound example of health disparities — of health inequity — and the potential ripple effects that the rate of COVID incidence may cause in younger generations of BIPOC children are haunting. 

I find myself thinking more and more about this stuff lately in part because my youngest just turned five on Saturday — and I’ve been wondering how she and her sister (and their friends, and children everywhere) will remember this weird time when they’re older — and of course because school’s back in (online) session beginning Monday. Never could I have imagined that my youngest would begin her compulsory education online, along with all of her peers, but as parents, we quickly — or eventually, anyway — learn that we don’t always have all the answers and that we can’t always predict the future. It’s a sobering conclusion to reach but an important one, nonetheless.  

Unfortunately, I don’t have a panacea here to offer all my readers, or more specifically, to all my readers’ children, but what I’ll say is this: it’s on us to observe and to listen. 

I know we’re all feeling our feelings every day with this pandemic, and that sometimes our feelings magnify a hundred-fold in the same day (or hour, I don’t judge), but so, too, can those of our children. 

I have come to the humbling realization that even though I can’t tell my children when all of this will be behind us, for now, I can at least listen to their frustrations and their joys and the panoply of feelings in between when they arise. When I asked my Girl Scout troop in tonight’s virtual meeting about what they were feeling going into fourth grade, I expected a glossed-over answer, and instead I got a gushing of feelings from almost everyone — even the quiet ones! — whose answers ranged from the I’m so nervous to do all of this online to I’m really excited to get going again and everything in between. 

We’re all going through something with this pandemic — and for some people, unfortunately it’s somethingS, plural — but so, too, are our kids.  

It’s a lot. I feel like that’s all I’ve been saying for the past 20+ weeks. 

While we may have little control over how this is all gonna go down, big-picture speaking, I’d argue that we have a much more monumental role in how it’s all gonna do down in the small-picture, in the universe that exists between us and our children, and right now, heading into the school-year, that’s what matters. 

Hang in there, everyone. 

And thank you — a massive, heartfelt, gracious thank you — to all the parents, families, and all the wonderful people who help us parent, teach, support us in our child-rearing and child-teaching, visibly or invisibly, every single day. 

This school-year’s going to be a ride.   

—

On occupying time and settling mental unrest

Reading. Like I said last week, aside from reading the daily news for the past couple weeks, I felt like I have been dragging my feet to read anything else. I finally got into my library loan of Such a Fun Age, about 48 hours before it was due, and I have no idea what took me so long. It took roughly forever to get that book from the library, and I think I can see why. It’s really good (even for someone like me who doesn’t usually read fiction much anymore), and I would be so interested to hear your thoughts. 

Listening. Same as above, I haven’t listened to much in the way of podcasts in the past week, with the exception of one or two from the Roche SWAP team.

Running. Both last week and this week I’ve been trying to get a little more sleep in the mornings, so I cut my mileage (~45 last week, down from 60+) and have mostly been running with the kids at mid-day or in the evening. I won’t lie; part of me feels like I’m being a slacker. A bigger part of me knows that I’m doing the right thing because come Monday, when the kids start distance learning, I’ll have to wake up early each morning to run to still be able to come home and get the kids up and ready for school. Like anything else, it’s a balance. G’s 5k training has been soldiering on, too, and if memory serves, we have about three-and-a-half weeks left of her 5k program. Some days she loves it, and other days, the Academy would be impressed at the performance she gives as she claims that she’s so tired, that she can’t run another step, and on and on and on. 

She’s five! Yes — she turned five in the past week, took her kindergarten assessment earlier this week, and in a few short days, she’ll begin kinder. It blows my mind. 

In the last week of summer: We are trying to maximize our ability to go outside at any time of the day, so it has meant beach time, lots of running and hiking in the neighborhood and in ARP, and generally (but not always successfully) detaching from technology during the day. Sadly, the kids and I encountered a 36’ dead humpback whale on the beach last week Friday (that was still there on Monday), which was heartbreaking. I’ve seen it in movies or TV before, but when I actually saw it in real life, I couldn’t believe it and hoped that it was just a boat before I realized that it was what I thought it was. 🙁  

83 days (11 weeks, 6 days) until Election Day. 

Stay healthy and safe, take care of yourself and others if you can, and keep reading and listening. xo