I commented to Sean recently that our home life has been relatively uneventful over the past couple weeks. He concurred and pointed out that we’ve sort of settled into a routine. April rolls out of bed at ass o’clock and starts her job before she’s truly awake. Later on, Sean gets kids up and fed and started on their assignments. Sean and April juggle kids through the rest of the morning with April as primary responder. Lunch happens around noon. Sean and April juggle kids through the afternoon with Sean as primary responder. April stops working and starts chores and kid interaction. Sean often works till dinner. We augment with evening and weekend work hours as needed. The kids have too much screen time. As Kurt Vonnegut says again and again in “Slaughterhouse Five,” so it goes.
Behold, the unicorn helmet.
After Ian’s scooter accident, we had to replace his helmet so we let him choose one he liked. Of course the ridiculous thing he chose is bright purple and has a unicorn horn, because with Ian, how could it not? I may have mentioned that he was asking to get back on his scooter the day after the accident happened. We finally let him get back on that horse, helmet firmly in place and took a walk / scooter ride around the neighborhood.
Since we’re stuck at home all day, every day, I’ve been making a point of getting the kids outside at least daily. Often they’ll putter around collecting bugs and dead plant life and sticks and rocks and constructing different scenarios in their sand box. The sand box used to be Bird Land. These days, I think it has become their mini-mall. Portions of it are designated a potion shop, a plant store, a pet store, a texture store, and on and on. What is a texture store, you might wonder? Ian will collect various leaves and things of varying textures. The prospective customer comes to his shop, letting him know what experience he or she would like to have, and he provides a rough leaf or a smooth stone or a soft flower.
These things have been hiding in the garage for way too long.
I have been working on our horrifically neglected back yard off and on while Maya and Ian have their outside time. This past few weeks’ task was to finally get all the mother’s day stepping stones the kids had made for me when they were really little out where I could see them more regularly (instead of being stacked in our garage). I scuffle-hoed the weeds out of a bed close to the house that I had wanted to leave largely unplanted, given the ever-present threat of termites. After a half-assed dirt-leveling, I put down landscape fabric and nestled my decorated cement stepping stones amongst about 900 pounds of smooth bagged stones purchased over the course of a couple weeks from Home Depot. I would not call the work particularly precise, but honestly I didn’t want it to be. And either way, I now get to see their little footprints and handprints with more regularity.
Our budding actor
Maya had been having one whole-class and one small-group Zoom session each week with her teacher and classmates. During one of these small-group sessions, Maya agreed to be in a play called, “The Very Cranky Bear.” She was going to play the part of the zebra and had a little over a week to make a costume and memorize her lines. Here’s the keeping it real part of our post: the only way I convinced her to memorize her lines was to bribe her with chocolate chips. I don’t even care. She did great, and sounded so much more natural than the kids who hadn’t been able to memorize. (Plus, now she knows she can do it.)
Ian – last day of “preschool” at home. He’s now a proud kindergartener.
The day of her play was also her last day of school, May 28th. We took a few photos of both her and Ian to commemorate the day. They’re proudly sporting their coronavirus moppy-headed haircuts. Ian honestly just likes his hair in his face all the time, apparently. And for Maya, we bought some sparkly headbands which don’t work quite as well as I’d hoped, but that she seems happy with … because sparkles.
Maya – last day of first grade at home. She’s now a very reluctant 2nd grader.
As an end of the school year treat, we gifted our dragon-obsessed daughter with a pair of dragon wings to wear. And we gave our unicorn-obsessed son a unicorn headband to wear. This seems to have added a fun dimension to their games where Maya is a hummingbird dragon and Ian is (you guessed it) a unicorn!
May 28th, which was a Thursday, was also our 20th anniversary. Had coronavirus not happened, last week we’d have been in NYC and our kids would have had their first no-parents stay with their grandparents. When so many people are struggling physically and financially, I feel like a jerk whining about our ruined vacation to NYC. We were going to go see Hamilton. We were going to eat at Le Bernardin. Instead we are here in Texas, at home, just like we’ve been for the past couple months. The kids had a bigger reaction to learning they would not be visiting their grandparents this summer than they had to the rescheduled Disney trip. I’m sure their grandparents are disappointed too. If it makes Lolli and Pop and Grammy and Grandpa feel any better, the kids really do look forward to those visits.
Our 20th anniversary dinner spread.
On Friday night, we parked the kids in front of the TV, and Sean picked up a set dinner from Uchiko. In the reservation, it asks if it’s for a special occasion, so I filled in the blank saying that it was our 20th anniversary. The fine folks at Uchiko did what they could to make it special. Not only did they slip in an extra dish – a chutoro sashimi – they also included a cookbook, which was signed by the folks at the restaurant. The extra dish I had kind of anticipated – I mean Uchiko does that sort of thing even when it’s *not* your anniversary. The book was a complete surprise and an incredibly sweet gesture. Oh, and did I mention that the food was amazing too? In the restaurant, they’re able to present everything at the optimum temperature and artfully arranged and garnished to what appear to be precise specifications. Obviously that’s impossible to achieve with a takeaway order, but care was clearly taken in the packaging of these dishes. The crispy things were still crispy. The smoky ribeye’s char still had a bit of crunch. We couldn’t have asked for better, especially during a pandemic.
They gifted us with a signed cookbook! Such a kind gesture.
The next morning, Saturday, I awoke just before 6 to watch a building implosion in downtown Richmond, VA. Why would I bother? Well, for about two years of my work life, I endeavored to vacate our presence from that building, which was substantial. I’m not going to go into the boring details of my job, but suffice to say, seeing that building brought to ruin by explosive charges was kind of satisfying.
Later that morning, we tuned in to NASA’s live channel to watch the Falcon 9 rocket blast the Crew Dragon capsule up to low earth orbit. The kids were WAY into watching the rocket blast off. It was hard to keep their attention though through the handful of minutes it took for the rocket stages to be ejected. (And we couldn’t really gain their interest at all the next day when the capsule docked with the International Space Station.)
We have decided to keep the kids going with their schoolwork routine through the summer. It gives them something to occupy their time, and who knows what school will look like when it starts back up in the fall. Best not to have summer knowledge atrophy as one more obstacle to overcome. In my head, I’ve been thinking of it as Camp Carona, but now that I type it out, it seems kind of morbid. I spent a fair amount of time thinking about how to structure it and, for better or worse, have built some incentives into the plan. We’re doing our own summer reading program. For a certain chunk of minutes spent reading, we’ll purchase them a new book of their choice. Ian can gain his minutes by being read to. If Maya reads to him, they both count the minutes. One week in, it seems to be encouraging them to read – Maya is nearly at her first goal already. Who knows though how things will shake out over the next couple months.
I’ve also made them sort of a to-do list. It covers academics, some playing, and some chores. Once they both complete their to-do list, they can choose a new art supply from a giant pile I procured from Amazon. Again, we’ll see how this pans out over the long haul, but at least right now, they’re motivated.
The world is not nearly so benign as our house, unfortunately. On May 25th, George Floyd died in Minneapolis. He was black man who suffocated after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. For the last few minutes, Mr. Floyd was motionless and rather than try to revive him, the officer remained on his neck. Video was captured, multiple videos even. One person interviewed since then called it a kind of strike three. The pandemic already has folks kind of on high alert all the time. The horrifically strained economy and rampant unemployment have compounded people’s uncertainty. And then, not for the first time, a black man was killed by a white police officer. The resulting protests and riots have been severe. The police response has run the gamut from sickening to heroic. I am a thinking, feeling person and so I’m having my own emotional response to all of this, but I really don’t feel like writing about that.
What I’ve been trying to figure out is what to tell the kids about it. I don’t believe they have ever once questioned me about why skin colors are different. Nor have I ever heard them repeating anything derogatory that they may have picked up out and about somewhere. Because they’ve asked no questions and there has been no “bad behavior” to correct, I’ve treated it as a non-issue. But it seems like maybe that’s what got us into this mess – or rather, what’s never actually gotten us out of the mess. I grew up thinking – while in my basically all-white small town and school and church – of course I’m not racist. I do not actively discriminate against people of color and so there is no problem that I personally need to solve. Also, from where I stood in my insular little world, racism was a thing that used to happen. The Civil Rights movement happened, and things were put right. But were they really?
I’ve read again and again that to really deal with systemic racism, we have to make ourselves ask uncomfortable questions, confront uncomfortable truths. Here’s one uncomfortable truth that I’m working through: if I’m being completely honest, I chafe a little at the notion that if I’m not out there marching in protest or writing a strongly worded letter to my representative that I’m part of the problem. On the other hand, one might say that I have likely unwittingly benefitted from a system that rewards me for nothing more than the color of my skin – or at very least, doesn’t punish me for it. And either way, I challenge anyone (myself included, of course) to think deeply about a man, whose alleged crime by the way was passing a fake 20 dollar bill, having the life crushed out of him by people who are intended to protect and to serve and not feel like maybe there’s a bigger solution required here than a paltry “I’m not a racist” attitude. I still don’t know how to talk to the kids though.
Here are my comparative Covid-19 numbers from the last Sunday I posted and this past Sunday. Travis County – 5/17 2,459 cases and 77 deaths – 6/7 3,697 cases and 97 deaths. Texas – 5/17 48,396 cases and 1,343 deaths – 6/7 75,408 cases and 1,841 deaths. United States – 5/17 1,516,343 and 89,932 deaths – 6/7 1,977,899 cases and 112,054 deaths. The World – 5/17 4,710,614 cases and 315,023 deaths – 6/7 6,799,713 cases and 397,388 deaths.
