New tools at work.
Day 181
School starts next Wednesday. All remote. Tonight we learned via robocall that the first three days will be half days. This week has been a long unfamiliar process of checking the calendar for the next pick-up time or Zoom meeting for each kid. I’ve filled out forms while they’ve gone with their dad to their schools to pick up Chromebooks, paperwork, school materials. We haven’t quite figured out the details of where everyone will be schooling from. Two of the kids share a room. And I’m working in a corner of the downstairs. Someone might need to be stationed at the table. Or out on the deck until it gets too cold. Or I might need to retreat to my bed at times. We’ll figure it out.
Tonight I made burritos and quesadillas for dinner, using my new pots and pans — a birthday gift to myself. My sister, who has spent the past several weeks establishing a home workshop in her garage, calls my kitchen acquisitions my tools. She’s not wrong. There’s not a pot, pan, appliance or utensil in my kitchen that I don’t use semi-regularly.
Now the dishes are done, the leftovers spooned into Pyrex and cooling. The boys of the house are watching the first NFL game of the season in the other room. It’s Friday eve, and it’s been a long time since I’ve written here.
Earlier tonight, before I made dinner, I sat down and watched the national news.
Wildfires, hundreds of them across several states, burning across the West.
A president who has lied to us about this virus since January and who is lying now about having lied to us for nine months.
Deaths mounting. Almost 190,000 in this country so far.
A warning from Dr. Fauci that we all need to plan to “hunker down” for the fall and winter.
Restaurants, as many as 40% nationwide, that expect not to survive through the next six months.
I walked into the kitchen, putting in my AirPods and turning up the music, feeling devastated. How do we take in this news and go on. The only way I know how is to get out the pots and pans, put the rice on, season the beans and make the guacamole. (Actually, the girls made the guac tonight, working together in the kitchen only to determine that the batch of avocados was bad. The guac tasted like feet. They made another batch, which was slightly better. I shrugged it off. “Sometimes it’s the ingredients. There’s nothing you could have done to make it better.”)
We are surrounded by lessons every day, I guess.
This year of school is not going to be about learning lessons and curriculum as much as it’s going to be about learning one’s own needs, style, frustrations. About what role motivation plays and how to find it, create it, even shun it at times. I’m anticipating fatigue and frustration, technical difficulties and confusion. But also, successes that come from flexibility, necessity.
Tonight, as we all sat together at the table, eating the meal I made, my 16-year-old said of his quesadillas, “These smack, mom.” The highest compliment these days. We continue to eat well, and I know that fact alone puts us in a bracket of privilege and safety that many others do not have — right now, or ever.
As devastated as I’m feeling, I’m feeling a glimmer of optimism, too. That we’ll get through this if we stick together. My kids have devices to learn on, internet access, each other. And as kids go, they smack.
Stay safe, everyone.