Category: Uncategorized Page 2 of 6

It’s back to school! In January, I began the Spring semester feeling optimistic. My daughter was entering daycare and I thought I might finally have enough childcare to have some time to catch my breath. I was excited to meet a new group of students. My OER textbook was coming together, I had some cool projects on the horizon: this was going to be my year.

And then Covid-19 hit, and everything changed. I still had great students, but the way I taught was completely upended, and our daycare was closed. I changed my method of delivery, my priorities and even my assignments, which is how I ended up blogging.

But now it’s a new semester: a new group of students, and a new situation. My students will be blogging from the start, and I’m looking forward to seeing all of their blogs and hearing their stories. I hope we get to meet in person one day, but even through the computer, their personalities are coming through. It seems appropriate that the semester is starting right as two things are happening:

1. It’s become clear that this won’t be over soon. We are going to have to adjust our way of life for years.
2. BC is doing well *knock on wood* and we’re beginning to lift some of the restrictions.

BC’s second phase is definitely causing both joy and anxiety, with some people feeling more joy, and others more anxiety. There’s still so much we don’t know about Covid-19, and many places that have opened up too soon have had a surge in cases. As I type this, there’s a large group of teenagers passing by: laughing, shouting at each other, not social distancing in the least. Some people are treating this as a return to normal, and others are hunkering down and preparing for things to get worse.

So far, however, it has felt good to be back in the classroom, even if that classroom is my couch and my computer. Even though I’ve taught online before, my classes have always had face-to-face orientation sessions. It was strange to facilitate creating our team charter in a collaborative writing document, though both classes came up with thoughtful charters. And it was definitely a first when my toddler burst into my office, said hello to everyone, found a random ziploc bag full of nails, then turned on my husband’s Spiderman game. I guess she’s been promoted to teaching assistant.

Today, I was doing some online banking and scrolled down to my February purchase history. How strange to see all those little transactions. The salted chocolate chip cookie I bought at Platform 7 and ate while reading a book. The coffee I bought on the way to work, before my 10 am class. The glass of wine I bought when I saw Hannah Gadsby.

And those tiny grocery bills. We used to go nearly every day, and it was the highlight of my toddler’s day. I know it’s a privilege at the best of times to be able to buy a coffee without thinking about it. But I felt so sad, looking at all those brief, thoughtless little moments of pleasure. Driving to work, drinking my iced coffee, listening to podcasts. Wandering the aisles of stores.

I know the last thing I bought before sheltering in place: a bag of flavourless Baked Lays at the Subway in Columbia College’s lobby. I was there to give a session on OER. If I’d only known, I wouldn’t have wasted my last frivolous purchase on wallpaper-paste sadness crisps. After my session ended, I saw a text from my friend. She’d become very ill after going to a conference, and the news was reporting that the conference had a Coronavirus outbreak. We’d interacted with her.

I picked my toddler up at daycare, drove her to a specialist’s appointment (where we were exposed to Covid, I’d find out later), and came home knowing that my family was going into lockdown. That was March 11th. Exactly two months ago.

Right now, we’re caught in an anxious moment where rules are starting to be relaxed, but there’s also no end in sight and there are expected to be larger outbreaks. Some people seem to be treating it as business as usual, and others are worried that relaxing the rules will cause mass death. Either way, I just can’t imagine casually wandering the aisles of a store, popping into a coffee shop, sitting there with my laptop people-watching. I’ve been reading that they might never find a vaccine. Or, the vaccine will only give a slight protective advantage for some people.

I am lucky to still have a job. I can pay my bills and feed my family. And it feels indulgent to stew over wanting to walk the streets with an iced coffee in your hand. But every once in awhile you get the reminder that we are in this for the long haul, and nothing will be the same, and I think it’s okay to mourn for those little moments of pleasure.

In his poem, “Everyone Sang,” Siegfried Sassoon captures the day that peace was announced. He wrote, “Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight; As prisoned birds must find in freedom.” Today, the B.C. government announced that restrictions will be slightly lifted.

It was less everyone suddenly burst out singing, and more “some people burst out singing and then other people shouted that those people clearly hadn’t studied the Spanish Flu and were reckless and probably going to kill us all #StayingHomeSavesLives.”

Or “everyone, after a brief moment of singing, assured everyone else that they were still going to keep everything mostly as it was, but maybe see their grandparents — or maybe even not that.”

Or “Some people hummed a little, and other people reminded them about the Spanish flu, and then other people reminded those people that other countries have reopened and avoided a spike in cases, and we’re doing more contact tracing and testing, and then everyone decided that instead of singing they wanted to instead bang pots and pans for the healthcare workers at 7 pm.”

Or “everyone wasn’t sure if they were supposed to sing or if they even felt like singing because, on one hand, it gave their heart a tiny spark of joy to think that their kid could see another child or hug a grandparent, but on the other hand, it’s likely that everyone will take this to mean ‘business as usual’ and there will be a massive spike of cases.”

You can see why I’m not a poet.

So, today was a strange one. For the past week, I’ve been sick. I have no idea how I got sick, because I’ve been so careful. But I got sick all the same, and for several days, I couldn’t swallow. I lived on popsicles and pudding. I’d lay awake at 3 am wondering if my shortness of breath was anxiety, or Covid.

I tested negative for Covid, thank goodness. And today was the first day when I felt like I’d rounded a corner and was getting better. But I feel acutely how dependent I am on other people’s actions, and how lucky I was. I washed my hands and sanitized everything and wore a mask and grocery shopped once a week, and I still ended up sick.

So, the close call is looming over me. But the joy that my daughter could see her grandparents, or play with her good friend, is also tugging at me. It looks like we are in this for the long haul, so what happens next becomes a complicated matrix. If I let my daughter see her grandparents or another kid her age, she might get sick. She might make someone else sick. But if I don’t, what’s the cost to a year spent without friends?

My calculations would be different if I had an older child, or more than one child, or if I wasn’t working, or if I had no children, or if I had a yard, or if I had a big house or a woods nearby. A thousand variables, and here I am still dependent upon other people. I could stay the course and still get sick. I did stay the course, and I did get sick, just not with Covid.

Until there’s a vaccine or an effective treatment (and we are so far off from those), there won’t be a ceasefire or a moment where everyone bursts out singing. There will be no celebration on the streets. There will just be these small, fraught moments, where every step forward is scary, and where the right thing to do won’t be obvious until years later.

I got tested for Coronavirus today. Four days ago, I drank a Coke and noticed it burned my throat. When I took my daughter or a walk that day, I had a bit of shortness of breath while just walking along a flat surface. That night, while reading her a bedtime story, it was the same. The next day, I had a full-blown sore throat, and it’s only gotten worse.

My daughter also isn’t feeling well. And because of that mild shortness of breath, when I called 8-1-1, they urged me to come in to get tested. So, I drove to a drive-through testing facility. You weren’t allowed to take pictures, but here’s how to went:

• You pull up to the site and someone asks you if you’re here to get tested.
• Then, a police officer asks you if you have symptoms. If so, you get to drive through.
• You drive your car through some cones, past a series of white tents that are heated by the kind of heaters you see on restaurant patios. Healthcare workers in masks ask you a series of questions and type your information into a computer.
• Then, another worker with a face shield does the test. I was surprised at the casual, friendly atmosphere. (Why am I reviewing this as if it’s Yelp?) The workers were chatting about what they wanted to get for lunch. And the woman who did my test was kind and asked questions about my daughter.
• The swab itself felt weird — the woman counted to 10, then it was over — but it wasn’t as painful as I expected.

And then I was done. The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes. I am so lucky to live in a place with access to testing.

But still, I am baffled at how I managed to get sick in the first place. I’ve been sheltering in place since March 11th. During that time, I have taken my toddler outside for one single outing a day, and when we return I wash her hands thoroughly and then do mine, change both our clothes, wipe down my cellphone and all surfaces I touched as I entered. I’ve also been grocery shopping and I wear a mask to do so, practice social distancing, and when I get home I wash my hands, shower and then wash my clothes.

Even if it’s not Coronavirus, which it’s likely not, where did I pick up anything? We did drive through McDonalds on our way back from the beach: a one-time treat for the toddler, who loves nuggets. But drive-thrus are considered relatively safe. That’s the only thing I can think of.

So here’s hoping that the illness is mild, and that we’ll be able to entertain a toddler in 1000 square feet for 10 days. Dot is already putting on her pants and saying, “Go outside now?” I bought a subscription to Disney+ because if we’re going to get through this, we’ll need an extra dose of Toy Story. Forky don’t fail me now!

I’ve been trying and failing to write and instead I’m playing endless games of online Boggle: finding words when word won’t find me. Getting schooled by Nana_of_9 and Wanda_Granny because I’m not actually good at Boggle. I don’t care about strategy and just like to follow the thread of letters until it unspools into a long word. ‘UNBELIEVABLE!’ the game cheers me on. ‘INCREDIBLE!’ Some days, you need to take compliments in whatever form they arrive.

Today, I tried to make myself a Mother’s Day present. Daycare is closed and I don’t have the appetite for the old “you’re not MY mom so why do I have to buy you a gift?” discussion. I know that Mother’s Day is a thing I shouldn’t care about. It’s heteronormative and capitalistic etc. etc. But some days, you’re whiny, and you’re trying to balance work with parenting in a global pandemic, and you could use a present.

So, I wanted to make one of those salt dough handprints. In my parents’ house, our pre-school handprints are framed along with a poem that goes something to the effect of:

Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small
And always leave my fingerprints
On furniture and walls
But everyday I’m growing up
And soon I’ll be so tall
That all my little fingerprints
You never will recall
So here’s a little handprint
Just so you can say
Exactly how my fingers looked
In Tiny Tots this May.

Tiny Tots was my preschool. I remember looking at that tiny handprint when I was 9 or 10 years old, sighing with wistful melancholy over my fleeting youth. (I was both dramatic and also have perpetually looked like a 40-year-old, in part due to my childhood penchant for sweater vests and permed hair). Who am I to deny my own toddler the pleasure of waxing nostalgic when she grows older, though my hope is that, unlike me, she won’t base her personality around The Phantom of the Opera and spend most of her childhood lurking around, wearing capes and punishing her enemies by composing satirical songs about their shortcomings.

Anyway. Make a salt dough handprint, I said.

It will be fun, I said.

It will surely go better than the last 8 – 10 crafts you attempted, I said.

Dear reader, I submit to you the fruits of our labour:

Majestic.

As I write this, I have paint on my neck, somehow. And on my pants. Still, I baked our greyish lumps into hard greyish lumps, and I cut a few into hearts, and they are charming in their own way. And because Mother’s Day is so fraught, and because I am tired, and because I have run out of words, I will resist the urge to turn the failed craft into a life lesson — Maybe the real salt dough handprint was the friends we made along the way — and simply return to playing Boggle: tracing my fingers along letters until a word appears and someone tells me I’m INCREDIBLE! UNBELIEVABLE! EXCELLENT!

As we settle in, my posts become further apart and fragmented. Painting and drawing and playdough and making stuffed animals dance and little walks and muddy puddles and possibly too much macaroni. (A few days ago during lunch, the toddler climbed on my lap, took my hands and wrapped them around her waist, and said, ‘Mommy cuddles. I eat ‘roni.” And then ate her macaroni lunch while being snuggled).

We went to the beach and found the half-burned notebook of a graffiti artist. The toddler selected some perfect sticks for herself, then gave some to my husband and I. “This is for you,” she said, seriously, as if giving us a wand or sword. We advanced towards the beach fully armed and ready for whatever the day threw at us. After the beach, we went through the McDonald’s drive-through for lunch.

It’s cherry blossom season and we threw the blossoms up in the air and pretended it was snowing, and all day the toddler’s curls smelled sweet. People stopped to take photos of her, and one even asked me to get out of the shot.

I have hit a wall when it comes to working. My semester is over, and I’m so proud of the wonderful work my students did. Their Coronavirus archives are far superior to my own. But now it’s time to prepare for the summer semester, and my brain has become curdled and sludgy. If I could just get a full day’s work in, I could get everything together. But I’m working in fits and starts: while she’s napping, while she’s sleeping. I hide in the bedroom but then I can hear her. (“Mommy? Mommy coming? Hi Mommy!” and my husband saying, “Mommy’s playing on her computer right now and doesn’t have time to play right now” — which — oof).

Right now, I’ve had 45 minutes to work, but instead I’ve just stared straight ahead: rudderless. I feel as if I spent the first few weeks of the pandemic busy in a million directions, trying to get students through, and now that I have a pedagogical empty nest, I’ve been forced to look up and realize what’s happening all around me. And all I see is an empty expanse: this pandemic stretching on and on.

Today we painted, and Dot was on edge. She painted her hands, then slapped them on the paper, stippling it with her handprints. The metal surface of our table rang out like a drum as she worked out her feelings.

I laid the paintings out to dry, then after her nap I cut them into hearts. I’m not good at crafts at the best of times, and it’s even harder when a toddler is holding on to the paper saying, “I hold the scissors. I try the scissors. I cut the paper.”

Then, we taped them to the window. We live near a hospital, and people have been decorating their windows with rainbows and hearts to cheer up the healthcare workers and thank them. Dot passed me the hearts, and I taped them on. She was very adamant that she didn’t want to tape them herself. Also, she had a precise location in mind for each one. And she insisted that a single triangle be included, because she likes triangles very much.

“Pass me a heart,” I would say, and she’d climb off the couch and choose the perfect one.

“This one is a good idea,” she said. “It’s a good plan.”

“Pass me another one,” I’d say.

“Oh, it’s a good idea,” she’d say, handing me a red heart.

It felt good to channel our feelings into paint, and then into imperfect hearts. It felt good to offer our imperfect hearts to everyone on the street, knowing that they’re too far away to see our ragged edges.

One of the things I admire about my students’ Coronavirus archives are how positive they are. Some are funny, some are filled with gratitude, some are focused on what they’ll do when they’re able to have some semblance of normalcy. But I’m old and grumpy, and am having a harder time being positive.

For a few weeks, things were difficult. Then, I hit my stride. I made a lot of bread and muffins. And now, I’ve reached a point where things feel so far off that I don’t want anything. Last night, I was craving a wedge salad with lots of blue cheese and bacon and it just seemed impossible that I would sit in a restaurant and cut through the crisp layers of lettuce with a fork, and hold up a glass of wine. I tried to imagine myself at The Keg and I just couldn’t do it. And it’s only been 6 weeks. I’m going to need a little more imagination to fuel me through this crisis.

Although, who knows what restaurants will survive this, or if the idea of going to restaurants will survive. When will people get comfortable with the idea of being around other people? When and if the restaurants open, will people find them too loud? Will they flinch when the wait staff bends over their table to refill a water glass? Will we go out for dinner with another couple and find ourselves with nothing to say?

I especially worry about my toddler. Yesterday was sunny, and everywhere was packed. I tried one park: too busy. Tried another: too busy. I thought I’d found one that was not very busy, but we were soon joined by a four-year-old, who ran up to my daughter and tried to give her a handful of grass.

My daughter stared at her.

“Make tea?” she said finally.

“Okay,” said the girl. “Let’s make tea.”

Normally, I would swoop in immediately and enforce the distance, or the other parent would, but for a second I watched them bending down together to stir their grass into ‘tea.’ And then I had to break it up. “Let’s move a little over here,” I said. “You guys can play tea, but just a little further apart.” A little further apart. A little bit more distance.

Either option ends in guilt. Don’t break up their playtime soon enough, and I’ve exposed my daughter to the virus. Flash forward 4 weeks and I could be in hospital — or worse! She could be in hospital! — thinking about that moment when the virus passed between them, calculating how much my weakness had cost. But break up too soon, and my daughter will grow wary of children and see them as a threat.

She was so overjoyed to see another child. “Hi kid!” she kept saying. She followed her around the entire time we were at the park, as I hovered, the ultimate helicopter mom, trying to keep the space between them.

I’d just watched Dr. Bonnie Henry talking on TV about holding the line, keeping the firewall strong, but it’s hard to keep up your energy to fight an invisible threat. It’s so easy to think: well, what’s the harm? They’re kids. Let them make teas and poultices out of grass and mud.

Then, we went into a community garden, and a little boy came over and crouched beside my daughter to explain that she was looking at rhubarb. “You can touch the leaves,” he said, “They’re soft.” And she did so, gently stroking the plant. Then, she touched his hair, as if she wasn’t quite sure he was real, and I worked to keep them apart.

“I’m trying,” said the dad. “It’s just –.” He was chasing after the boy’s sibling.

“I know,” I said. “I’m trying too.”

When I started this blog, I would write everyday. But it’s the end of the semester, and I’ve been distracted by grading for this semester and plans for the next one. Plan the course. Make a course map. Make a welcome video. Prepare the course presentation. Write all the assignment prompts. Set up the Moodle sites. Grade papers. Respond to emails. I feel that I’m being stretched between the two semesters: doing both poorly.

And, between it all, I play with Playdough and go walking with my toddler, who loves the painted rocks that people have been making and wants to give the rocks bottles and put them to bed and say, “Sweet dreams. I love you, rock.” (Social distancing probably means not kissing rocks, but she is very enamoured with this particular rock). The weather has been nice, so we’ve been walking through the neighbourhood, noticing things. A mural with an octopus. Some trees fat with white flowers. Pine needles on the ground. She loves cedar and pine. Burying her hands in pine needles or wood chips is her favourite thing.

And then I come home and get reminded for the fifth time that I haven’t read the book for book club, and I remember that the grocery shopping needs to be done, and I haven’t written the assignment prompts, and my bedside table is a disgrace, and should clean the bathroom and this and that.

So, the days ebb and flow. I enjoy the sunshine with my toddler, and try to tamp down the misplaced anger I feel towards people having picnics in the park or parties in the school playground. (I never thought that the sound of an icecream truck could spark such fury. Apparently ice cream trucks are essential services??) I feel content with checking small tasks off my to-do list, as if this weren’t a pandemic, but my brain is still buzzing with nervous energy. I’m constantly checking the daily charts that the CBC puts out. I watch the 3 pm broadcasts with Bonnie Henry, and pitch my mood to the numbers of cases, the numbers of deaths, the hospitalizations, as if I’m reading a weather forecast.

But the numbers are good, so far. And the weather is nice, for now. And things are progressing in their own way. And these days are tense and boring.

The past few days have featured long conference calls, but honestly it’s good to fill the air with other voices. And it’s good, for a little while, to have a problem that everyone can work on solving together, and which can come together in a few hours.

I feel the same way about this journal. Most days, I feel like I am bad at everything. And especially now, I am constantly being reminded that I didn’t buy the right things during the grocery shop, that I haven’t started the book club book for Tuesday, that my courses for Summer aren’t planned, that my closet is a disaster, that my toddler wasn’t interested in my crafts, and on and on.

But, I can write a few sentences: mostly to myself. I can watch the words appear on the page, and not care if they’re good words or the best words. It’s soothing to end the day having made something small, even if no one else will see it.

I’ve been trying to care less about productivity. Historically, I’ve been someone who’s brain has to be constantly distracted by work. For ages, my entire self esteem rested on the idea that I was someone who works hard and cares a lot. But then you end up with a pandemic: something you can’t work your way out of. You can be the Very Best Little Pandemic Champion and you will still be in a pandemic.

Today brought the good news that in a few weeks, we might be easing up on social distancing restrictions. Our curve is flattening. We’re such a long way from the end, but there’s a little scrap of daylight to hold on to. And so I’m beginning to think about what I might want to take with me from this time. Definitely, I want to make soda bread while listening to folk music. And I want to keep going on walks with my toddler: noticing the small things she notices. And I want to keep writing, in a small way, even though I know that work cannot save me.