I can’t help but notice that there is one member of my family who is actually rather ecstatic about the pandemic, and he doesn’t even know it exists.
Our dog, Loki, has never been happier.
Today I got a haircut. Dylan and Bill were both out, but Shane was still home. In five months, I’m not sure Loki’s been left completely alone. Someone is always in the house with him, being part of his pack.
Six months ago, this was not the case. A haircut would have been something I would have “squeezed in” between work and picking up Shane at play rehearsal. Today it was the highlight – and only activity – of my day.
When I came home, Loki greeted me like I’d been gone for a week.
Loki knows that, lately, when we go somewhere we generally take him with us. He goes on walks. He goes for rides in the car (to the library). Sometimes he even rides with us to pick up take-out or ice cream. He’s even gotten two doggie sundaes in five months!
Sometimes Loki goes on vacation for the day. It’s not quite doggie daycare; he pretends he’s a therapy dog. We loan him out like a good book – but only to people we love. My parents have created a second home for him, and he loves it even more at their house. (They pay even more attention to him than we do.)
When he’s home, Loki bonds with us. We spend hours with this dog, letting him cuddle up next to us at all hours of the day and night. He’s fed with great regularity, and we’re all very well-rested. There’s no shortage to his exercise, and we even play games with him.
The games are mental stimulation – not just for Loki, but for us.
I wonder if, someday, we’ll go back to our fast-paced approach to life. Perhaps in six months, or a year, we’ll be working and schooling and running errands. A haircut will be squeezed in again, and we’ll sometimes go out for entertainment.
Will we then leave the house without so much as a glance at our dog? I wonder if we’ll go back to flinging a treat across the floor and high-tailing it out to the car before we notice his sad eyes. I wonder if he’ll wonder, in the future, what changed.
Quite honestly, I hope the pendulum doesn’t swing back quite that far. I’ve enjoyed spending time with my dog. I’ve enjoyed lying around with few responsibilities and nothing but time on my hands. Yes, I’m bored. But I’ve rediscovered the simple pleasures – one of which is my dog.
The difference, I think, is that he hasn’t changed anything at all. Loki has been right here, wanting to be with us, then and now.
It’s rare that I share someone else’s writing in my parenting blog, but in this case, I deemed it essential. This letter from a mom in Italy gave me hope, so I am sharing it here (edited just a tad for brevity):
American Parents: Why Things in Italy are Almost Back to Normal
by Katherine Wilson | August 8, 2020
In late March, Italy was then the Covid-19 hotspot of the world, with cases increasing exponentially every day. In the US, I saw my American friends doing exactly what I had done just a few weeks before: letting their teens socialize, expounding on how Covid was “just the flu,” acting as if the virus was far removed from their daily lives and probably innocuous.
Now the tables have turned. New infections in Italy have been close to zero for months, and we are living a summer that feels almost normal. There are no sleep-away camps, but there are sports, and vacations, and socializing. We check the numbers each day, and act accordingly.
Here are a few Do’s and Don’ts for American parents, who are having trouble seeing the light at the end of the tunnel:
- DO: Know that this is a temporary situation. This pandemic will end, even if you don’t know when. Patience is something that we need to model for each other and for our kids.
- DON’T: Focus on the possibility of another wave. Live each day in the present. If the numbers in your area are good, take advantage of that and get your family outdoors into the fresh air.
- DO: Seek out positive news about vaccines. Research is progressing at the speed of light. I have friends who are signed up to try one of the vaccines in September. The scientific world is collaborating in a way that it has never done in history, and is making unprecedented progress.
- DON’T: Make any major life decisions. A pandemic is not the time to reevaluate your spouse or career.
- DO: Plan a trip for post-Covid. Why not plan a family trip somewhere you’ve always wanted to go for next summer? There are good insurance policies, and the planning will do good things to your psyche.
- DON’T: Feel so bad about what your kids have gone through that you let them off the hook. Our teens had very few boundaries during lockdown, but now that they are freer in the world, it’s tough to reestablish their responsibilities at home.
- DO: Learn some lessons from the way Italy handled this. Governments can’t be afraid to tell citizens: “No, you can’t do that.” Like in families, communication needs to be coherent, clear, and well-enforced.
- DON’T: Consider mask wearing an all-or-nothing deal. Wear them when you need to, which is anytime you are near people who are not in your pod. Italians carry masks with them everywhere, and put them on and take them off many times a day. Either the mask goes on, or they’re an upper arm bracelet.
- DO: Know that hugging and hand-shaking isn’t a great idea yet. Some friends will forget about Covid very quickly, and it’s fine to remind them that as long as the virus is still circulating, we need to be diligent.
- DON’T: Pay attention to your kids when they say that you are “the only parent” who is still thinking about Covid. Even when the infection rate is close to zero, it will exist until there is a vaccine. We can live quasi-normal lives without throwing all caution to the wind. This summer in Italy isn’t completely carefree, but it’s a whole lot better than it’s been.
I love Dylan’s college. I think it’s doing the best it can in this unprecedented situation, especially given its location in an area of the country not known for its progressive behavior.
But what I really like is the college’s Facebook page designed specifically and exclusively for parents of students.
Because when the news was out that Dylan’s college was opening two weeks late, I had no idea what to do, where to turn, who to ask about options. I wanted to know right away: ARE there any options?
And Dylan came downstairs after midnight when the news broke and said, for the first time in months: “Don’t get your hopes up, but I might want to take, like, a gap semester.”
I had no idea what a “gap semester” might entail. We had already paid the college bills. Could we get a refund? Who did we need to contact? What about housing? What about the stuff he has in storage? What about his classes, his books, his credits, his financial aid…?
By the time I checked into the parents page, there were a hundred people yammering about their unhappiness. Schools should reopen! they screamed. Virus be damned!
A hundred other people were cheering. Finally! they yahooed. I’m so glad the students can stay safe!
Then there was one parent who unassumingly posted a link to a page on the college’s website. The link was labeled “Leave of Absence.”
I read the comments from parents who had done this “Leave of Absence” thing, describing the quick, easy process. So I went to the link and read some more. The Leave of Absence page described exactly what Dylan needed: a one-semester break with no penalty, for a student who has completed at least one semester of college, is in good academic standing, and fully intends to come back to college and get a degree.
This sounds too good to be true, I thought.
Another parent posted a document from a legal website that assured me that a Leave of Absence during this pandemic was, by law, quite acceptable.
Basically, a Leave of Absence means that Dylan would not take classes for one semester, and instead would be able to have a lengthier in-person college experience when the pandemic is over.
So we spoke to Dylan and offered him this option. I’d been speaking to him about it for three months, but he’d always shrugged it off.
This time, he thought about it for nearly 24 hours (driving me crazy) and then said, “Yeah, I think I want to do that.”
And then he filled out the forms, wrote the requisite letter, and scanned and emailed the documents to the appropriate department.
Meanwhile, I emailed financial aid to see what consequences he would have. I emailed someone at the registrar’s office. I emailed housing. And I emailed the storage people.
Dylan could have done all of that, but I had nothing better to do.
And then we waited – safely not at a college campus teeming with coronavirus – for Dylan’s Leave of Absence approval.
Approval arrived in less than 24 hours. Dylan is now temporarily un-enrolled in college, and I am actually thrilled about it.
Dylan has been home from college since March 5, when he flew home for spring break. No one expected him to stay until Christmas.
The first day of college classes is August 19. He was supposed to live in an apartment with three roommates, which scared me to death. No matter what precautions the college takes – and The Plan is quite extensive – there is nothing to ensure that your roommates will follow all the rules.
Dylan Facetimed all of his roommates in a group chat, and they all said, generally, yes, we’re going to follow all the rules. Dylan insisted that he wanted to go back, and in spite of our fears, Bill and I agreed: he’s an adult; he’s been responsible all summer. We expect him to be as responsible as humanly possible when he goes back in the fall.
We bought and packed all we could for his new apartment. Much of it is kitchen stuff, because we didn’t want him to share germs – or vice versa – with his roommates. But I overheard one roommate talking about the various pasta dishes he planned to cook, and I panicked a bit.
Dylan got an air filter last year because he has some respiratory issues. (Yes, he has respiratory issues and he was going back to school.) The air filter helped, but didn’t kill germs. So we invested in another air filter – in fact, two new air filters – at a high price tag. But with that price, we had some confidence that the far-UVC light was worth it. It’s supposed to kill germs in the air from coronavirus.
Then we bought the masks – dozens and dozens of masks – so that Dylan would always have a new mask at the ready. We made hotel reservations as move-in day quickly approached. We made plane reservations for his trip home at Thanksgiving, knowing we wouldn’t be able to ride in a car with him for two weeks after he left school.
And then, less than two weeks before Dylan’s first class, the college decided to delay the in-person opening of school. It was an all-too-familiar scene: they didn’t quite decide to close and they didn’t quite decide to stay open.
Classes still start on August 19, but in an online format only. And Dylan – who would be fine taking online classes, I’m sure – considered that he might actually want to do something different than what he’s been saying for the past five months.
So Dylan is in the process of finding out about his options for the fall semester – and it looks as though he’s going to be home with us, in some capacity, for at least a little while longer.
Almost 3,000 people died in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Three thousand people. We all watched in horror from our living rooms, our schools, our workplaces.
We watched in horror because nothing so terrible had ever happened to our country – not in our lifetimes, not since World War II, which most of us had only heard about from relatives – or history books.
For weeks after 9-11, we cried for those we lost. We cried for the children whose fathers and mothers didn’t come home. We sobbed over stories of heroism and bravery that saved some lives but couldn’t save others. Three thousand lives were lost – and there was nothing we could do to change it. We flew flags from our porches and our cars. We flew flags at half-mast for eons.
Together, as Americans, we supported the families of the loved ones who were lost. We, as a nation, cried together.
Alan Jackson wrote a song that encompassed 9-11: Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning? If I ever forget exactly how I felt during that time, I listen to that song.
Fast forward 19 years.
People died in China. Then they died in the U.S. Then a few more people died. Then a bunch more.
A new virus had taken hold of the world.
Eventually, three thousand people died – again. The newspapers reported the irony: death numbers from coronavirus in New York City were higher than the number of deaths from 9-11.
Then three thousand more people died. Then another 3,000 people – and another 3,000 people – and another 3,000 people. In fact, so many people died that we’ve basically hosted fifty-two separate 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Imagine 52 days just like 9-11.
But this time, we are not sitting around crying. We are not rallying together, in support of one another, sending prayers for the families who have lost loved ones – 158,000 loved ones.
There are no waving flags – not anywhere. No one is writing songs about our sorrow. In fact, no one seems to even care that people are dying – lots and lots and lots of people are dying.
Instead, they’re talking about percentages: Not everyone dies, they say. My odds are good, they say.
Thousands of people are going about their lives like everything is awesome – or at least “normal.”
We are supposed to stay indoors, isolate, take care of our families. We are supposed to support our communities by staying home. And if we must go out – and honestly, we all must go out – we should put a mask on our faces, so that we (please) don’t contaminate and possibly kill our neighbors.
Most of my family – my loved ones – and my dearest friends are diligently doing this.
But some aren’t.
And a whole lot of strangers aren’t. They won’t wear the masks, they won’t stay indoors, and they sure aren’t supporting their neighbors.
Fifty-two terrorist attacks so far – and not a single tear shed as a country. Instead, we’re bickering. We’re screaming about freedom while the rest of the world laughs – and cries – at our misfortune.
The rest of the world is crying, watching us, as they secure and stabilize their own countries. The way we cried about Italy.
The rest of the world is looking at us the way we looked at the poor, starving children from the Sally Struthers commercials – their wide, vacant eyes.
“Won’t you please help?”
We are now the saddest, most pathetic country on the planet.
But instead of mourning our losses and doing what we can together, we are arguing. How many more times does the world have to stop turning for us to actually do something about it?
Since we are pushing forward with opening campus without any testing, and since we know the virus will hit campus, we (as parents) would like to tell our son what to do – exactly – WHEN he gets the virus, since we won’t be there – or be able to whisk him away from campus – when he gets sick.
My son has ADHD and pre-preparation has always been the key to his success. He’s already prepped with dozens of masks, substantial cleaning supplies and more knowledge than most about how to stay safe. But when he gets sick, he’s going to need answers right away.
So I have a lot of questions and I don’t want to ask them in the midst of the mayhem, after the virus starts. Please help me prepare him for the worst case (inevitable) scenario by answering the following:
1. When my son first gets symptoms – whatever they are – should he stay in his dorm room and continue to share the bathroom with his three roommates? Or should he be tested right away – and how/where should he go for testing?
2. Are you really going to charge a “small fee” to test for a virus that could be fatal? And how much will it cost? Is it something that can be put on his bill (for us to pay), or does he need to have cash/card with him for payment?
3. Should he go immediately to quarantine when he starts showing symptoms, or should he stay in his room until he gets his test results?
4. WHERE is quarantine happening? Where/when should he go?
5. What about asymptomatic students? Is there going to be guidance for students who may have been exposed but aren’t showing symptoms?
6. If my son becomes too sick to go to class, what happens with his classes? Even if he has online access, he may be too sick to lift his head from the pillow – and/or he may fall too far behind to recover. If he has to retake his classes in the spring, will we still be required to pay full tuition?
7. If he is in quarantine, how will he be monitored? Who decides if he needs to go to the hospital? Will there be special and/or additional medical staff for quarantined students? (And how will those workers stay safe?)
8. If my son goes to quarantine, what will he need to take with him? Should he pack a to-go bag, just in case? And will someone be able to pick up things from his room when he forgets them – especially since his possessions may be contaminated?
9. Who makes sure he gets what he needs – water? food? medicine? What is the address for shipping care packages – and are they going to be delivered directly to him in quarantine, or will they sit in the UPS store until his quarantine is over (therefore defeating the purpose of sending)?
10. Will there be any communication between students/staff so that – at least – the campus knows when and where the virus is traveling – and how substantially it’s traveling through campus? Will there be a notification system for parents, too, so that we can make an informed decision – especially in case we do want to get our son home from campus?
Thanks so much, in advance, for your thoughtful answers. Really, you guys are doing great in an unprecedented time – but it’s time for us to prepare for the repercussions of opening campus without testing, and it’s time for us to prepare my son for the realities of going back!
Dylan is back from Texas, a coronavirus hot-spot, where he did nothing except to visit his girlfriend.
He stayed inside his girlfriend’s house or went outside into isolated areas. Other than the airports, Dylan spent time with his girlfriend and her family – and they self-quarantined for two weeks before his arrival, just to be safe.
Still, I insisted he get a test, so that we could determine he was “safe” and allow him near his grandparents if the need arose.
So I sent him to our local church, where his appointment was set for 3:30-4:00. After I made the appointment, that time option disappeared – which, I erroneously thought, meant that was a time just for Dylan to be tested. I thought it would be Dylan and the tester.
And – again erroneously – I believed he’d be in a drive-through in the church’s giant parking lot, since that’s what I’ve seen on TV.
But no.
The church was packed with people. While masks were required, the place was teeming with people of all ages – some with symptoms, some without. The workers were running amok between them.
Dylan said there were hundreds of people. And while there were markers on the floor for social distancing, some of those markers held 10 people on one spot.
And my baby was standing in the middle of the chaos, wearing a semi-casual mask (not the N95 he wore on the plane). He texted me:
I’m more likely to get it here tbh
He’d been there awhile before he started texting me, but after maybe a minute of my understanding the situation, I texted back:
GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT
(I was reminded of the horror movie – and it was a fair comparison, I think.)
should I really just leave
YES
how do I do that I’m still in line
GET OUT OF LINE. JUST GO.
ok
RUN
Dylan got out of line, went out to the parking lot, got in his car – utterly untested – and left.
Now he’s added another two weeks of waiting to see if he got the virus – and this time, it’s because the testing area was such a mess.
He was better off in Texas.
When I’m not worried about Dylan, I’m worried about Shane going back to school – except for one substantial difference: an online option.
The public schools in our area are still considering the various plans they’ve created since this pandemic started. They’ve announced two options, and published a couple of sample schedules.
One of the options is to hold school virtually. The plan is to have more Zoom-meeting-like classes, and fewer classes like they did in the spring. (In the spring, teachers basically just tossed out a video to watch and a related assignment, and hoped kids got the concepts.)
While the new online plan looks slightly more promising than the previous no-plan plan, the schools would like very much to have schools reopen for the whole county.
This, of course, is impossible.
So: the “hybrid” plan groups students into smaller groups – Groups A, B and C – and suggests that each 1/3 of the students will go to Periods 1-4 in the morning twice a week, then Periods 5-8 in the afternoon twice a week, with one day of online school for teacher check-ins (tentatively Wednesdays).
They’ve decided to “phase in” each group of students, starting with the youngest kids in each school – i.e., the kindergarteners, the sixth graders in middle school, and the freshmen in high school. Shane isn’t scheduled to be in school – even two days a week – until November, because as a junior, Shane’s in the “Phase 3” group.
They haven’t finalized any schedules, but the samples are interesting.
Perhaps most interesting is that, to comply with the state’s social distancing regulations, the schools will only be offering bus service to 12 children per bus. And they’ve suggested that elementary school children should have first dibs for bus service.
How will the other 100,000 students get to school, I wonder?
My favorite part – and truly the best thing – is that parents have the option of keeping students home. We get to choose whether we want to “opt in” to this well-constructed but ludicrous plan, if it’s instituted.
And I do not wish to opt in.
Shane would like to go to school. He wants very, very, very much to go to school. He wants to be with 1/3 of his friends and take 1/2 of his classes and attend school for 4/5 of the week.
But to me, that’s like saying, “Since reopening didn’t quite put us over the edge with another spike of coronavirus cases, let’s send the kids to school and see if they can get it!”
So – since we’ve gone this far to stay safe – if I have the option, I would like him to stay home and work virtually.
And since Shane is under 18, I do have the option. He can stay home until he turns 18, or until there’s a vaccine. I’m good with either.
Dylan is in Texas, where coronavirus is ravaging the state. He’s there visiting his girlfriend, staying with her family, and staying home, at her house, while her family does the same.
It’s nerve-wracking, but I am handling it. I know he’s safe. I know he’s being responsible. From what I’ve seen in the news, Dylan’s in the minority amongst teens in this country. He wears a mask; he goes nowhere, except inside his own car. He washes or uses hand sanitizer constantly.
Yet in a month, Dylan is supposed to move back to Nashville, where he will be returning to college. In Nashville, this weekend’s spike of coronavirus cases was so high, no one should even travel there.
It’s obvious that the young people are causing the spikes in cases around the country. All of us “old” people know it. WKRN-TV (Nashville’s local news station) spells it out:
“We can put all the testing out there, we can put all the restrictions out there, but if people let their guard down which is what is happening, and they’re being selfish and they are causing this virus to get rampant in our city,” Dr. Alex Jahangir, chair of the Metro Coronavirus Task Force told News 2. … The average age of those testing positive in Nashville is now 25 to 34 years old and Jahangir says it’s because of complacency.
When the college kids get back to town, I bet the age drops to 18.
The charts for Davidson County, where Dylan is expected to return, show a youthful population out of control. Tourism is up. And Nashville – not just the Country Music Capital of the World anymore – is a serious party town. I’ve never seen so many drunks in one city in my life. It’s like spring break in Daytona – only without a beach in the background.
Worse yet, thousands of students from Dylan’s college have decided that, to “protect” themselves, they will move off campus.
So those students won’t be eating as many meals from the cafeteria, and they won’t be confronted with other students inside the dorms.
Most of them will still have roommates, because it’s too expensive to live in an apartment alone. So how does this help anyone?
Because those students will be shopping at the local grocery stores, visiting the local drug stores, getting takeout from the local restaurants – and doing God-knows-what-else in Nashville… then going to class on campus, and bringing all those germs with them.
Dylan’s plan is to stay inside his apartment – with his three roommates – and only visit his girlfriend – who is living with three other roommates. So he’ll only have contact with all of his roommates, and all of the people those roommates contact, and his girlfriend and all of her roommates and all of the people they contact. So … just about 1,000 people. On any given day.
Unless they come into contact with someone who’s recently walked 500 yards into Nashville proper, like an apartment-dweller. Then it’s about 10,000 people.
And the college just surges forward, making plans, saying they will clean the lobbies more regularly, and require masks for the students and professors and administrators. (According to locals, only about 50% of the people in Nashville are wearing the required masks.)
Oh, and the college is prepping one floor of one building as a “quarantine” area, for students who test positive, so they have somewhere to recover.
And hopefully to not die.
People are still refusing to wear masks.
There are people allowing their children to go without masks. Yesterday I took a walk in the park in the evening, and the place was mobbed. There was a full-team soccer practice on the soccer field. Two soccer players were wearing masks – around their necks.
There were two baseball fields with teams practicing. On one field, everyone was socially distanced because, well, that’s how you play baseball. But no one was wearing a mask.
On the other field, there was a line of maybe ten little leaguers – all under the age of 8 – sitting knee to knee, on the ground, listening to the coach. The coach, of course, was not wearing a mask.
A couple of adults stood nearby, presumably “helping” with little league practice: no masks. Is that helpful?
In Maryland, we are fortunate to have our COVID numbers dropping. Our governor was swift to take action and careful to enforce rules. I wish I could say the general population was equally swift and careful, but that same park was teeming with people until the minute Maryland finally closed its parks.
Yesterday I drove past a sign for a restaurant/bar way out in the country. The sign announced: WE ARE NOW FULLY OPEN!
It was the exact same place I’d seen with people laughing and drinking on the wraparound porch after the pandemic suggested that places be shut down. I wanted to spray paint over their new sign: YOU ARE NOW FULLY STUPID!
From what I saw yesterday, our numbers are going to go back up.
Meanwhile in Tennessee, where Dylan goes to college, the parents of his classmates are saying, “I’m not worried at all” about their children, or other students, being careless in the fall.
Not worried AT ALL?!?
Teenagers are holding parties in Alabama to see who gets the virus first! Do you even know this?!
I’m not debilitated by worry (anymore) but who is actually NOT worried? Who can say they don’t care about this disease that’s killed hundreds of thousands of people?
I think the only people who can honestly say they’re “not worried” are people who only care about themselves.
And that’s what’s so frustrating about the political divisiveness, the stupidity of the current administration, and the carelessness of whatever parents sent their children to little league practice – and whatever coach sat them down in such a tiny area. It’s not so much that a mask will save lives. It’s that if you’re not worried about a deadly disease, there’s something wrong with you.
I’m not happy about staying indoors, stuck. I want to go do things again. I’m so sick of washing my hands. But I’m not going to stop just because I’ve suddenly decided that it’s more important to go out and play than it is to keep the world safe.
It’s hard to write these days. I’m so, so angry. I’ve spent a lot of time looking through things that I wrote in the past, and that was depressing. Between the depression and the anger, I want to crawl into a hole. I don’t want to write.
BUT REALLY?!? You sent your kids to little league practice?!? Who does that?!?
You want to laugh and drink with your friends? You’re sending your kids back to college in a place where the numbers are rising like lightning? And you aren’t worried – not even a little?
Maybe you should hold a nice COVID party of your own, mask-free. Just STAY AWAY FROM MY FAMILY.
Just. So. Angry.
