It hits me sometimes, randomly.
You should be at school right now.
Or
I should be picking Nolan up from preschool.
Or
We should be at dance/gymnastics/swimming/t-ball.
Whatever the moment, the refrain in the back of my head is always the same:
You shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t be here.
We shouldn’t be here.
Though there are days I can hardly remember our “before”. There used to be times, numbers on the clock, that were burned into my brain:
8:25: leave for preschool drop-off
8:46 (I think?): Caden and Brooklyn catch the bus
11:10 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: leave to pick Nolan up from preschool
11:10 on Thursdays: leave to meet Caden and Brooklyn for lunch
6:00 on Tuesdays: dance
5:30 or 5:45 or 6:00 (I can’t remember) on Thursdays: gymnastics for the boys
I don’t know what they’ll remember about this time, at six years old, at four years old. Will they remember not being able to go to school? Will they remember all these days strung together at home? Will they remember watching videos of their teacher, of worksheets, of submitting activities on their tablets? Will they remember getting more screen time?
They were only in school for all of six months, after all. Maybe all this being home again simply seems like a return to normal. There’s a sense in which they don’t know what they’ve lost. The Kindergarteners were supposed to have an end-of-year zoo field trip, but Caden and Brooklyn didn’t know about it yet and I’m sure not about to tell them. They should be experiencing their first track-and-field day at school, instead we’re doing it virtually. (See also: explaining what track and field is.) Nolan should have an end-of-year party, complete with cookies and songs for us parents. He should be playing his very first year of t-ball.
There are some things they know they’re missing, kind of, but still, they’re intangible. I’m not sure they would have remembered if we hadn’t told them about missing their dance recital or that baseball probably isn’t happening this summer. They understand a little bit more that they’re missing out on museums and parks and playgrounds and playdates and beaches. Normal (what should be normal) kid stuff.
There’s a sense in which I’m carrying all of these losses for them. I’m the mom. I feel them more keenly. I know what they’re missing.
You shouldn’t be here.
We shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t be here.
Kids are resilient, these three are resilient, I know they are, they’ll be fine, we’ll all be fine. (I’m fine, this is fine, everything is fine.) They’ve been troopers. They had more questions than tears (in fact, there were none) when we told them they couldn’t play with their friends, go to school, do their regular activities. Still, I worry about their lost childhood. (Too much? Too dramatic?) Because they’re only little for so long, we only have them for 18 years, they’re only little little for much less than that. Even the loss of one summer (three months of school, one dance recital, one session of swim lessons, one season of baseball, countless birthday parties, one family vacation, all the things) feels like a lot.
And they’ve been great but it’s still hard. It’s hard because we’re all home together and even on the days when things are pretty good, it’s hard. It’s hard because just a few days ago I realized that Caden and Brooklyn have actual real-live email accounts for school to check and let’s all please remember that they’re SIX right now so that falls on me. (Hi, I basically ignore them.) It’s hard because we can’t go anywhere we usually go for fun. It’s hard because I recognize the privilege in my complaints and how can I even be talking when we have a backyard and the time and ability to homeschool and enough money for food and toys and ice cream just because. It’s hard because we’re all here together and have been here all together for so long and I saw a post on Facebook the other day that said the way our kids talk to each other is a reflection of how we speak to them and if that’s true then we’re doomed, all doomed, because there are days where I don’t think we can all speak any words around here without crying and/or yelling and so apparently they’re all going to grow up to be serial killers instead of kind human beings and I’m sorry, society, but I tried.
+++++
We usually go on a bike ride in the afternoon. Usually the boys take their scooters and Brooklyn takes her hand-me-down bike from a neighbor and sometimes it hard for me to keep up. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get everyone to go but they all enjoy it in the end.
They’re (mostly) diligent with their schoolwork in the morning. I make sure we’re done by lunchtime. Nolan is basically another Kindergartener right now and sits right along with Caden and Brooklyn, counting by 10s and segmenting words and yelling out answers to their teacher’s questions. It will be interesting to see him go to Kindergarten in two years when he has a third of the curriculum under his belt. Heck, it will be interesting to see him go back to preschool in the fall (back, back, please go back) after sitting through Kindergarten material for the last few months,
“Mommy,” Brooklyn said the other day, “In the fall, when we’re first graders, the sickness could still be here.”
“Yes,” I said. “We might still be doing school kind of like this in the fall.”
(You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here.)
She scampered off after that revelation. I didn’t tell her yet, I won’t until there’s certainty, but I’ve been mentally preparing for school in the fall to look different than usual, different even than what we’re doing now, though I don’t know what that looks like yet. Every other day? Every other week? Half days? Still distance learning some days, some weeks, every day? I’ve been researching iPads to replace their too-slow tablets as a precaution, been mentally preparing for the rest of 2020 to look nothing like what we ever would have thought.
Little did I know when I mourned Caden and Brooklyn’s start of Kindergarten (But like a HAPPY mourning. Oh what I would give to have an ordinary sadness right now.) that I would get a mere six months of reprieve before they’d all be home again, 24/7, full time, more work right now than they have been for the past couple of years.
Here we are. Usually on top of one another. (I don’t know why we have all this square footage, both outside and in, when all they ever do is share the same few square feet of space.) And sometimes that looks wonderful and idyllic and other times it involves screaming and crying. But we’re here. It’s here that we’re learning and working and cooking and baking and laughing and shouting and playing and reading and connecting. Right here. Which is, unexpectedly, unusually, unbelievably, exactly where we should be.