Like millions of others right now, due to the coronavirus pandemic, I’m staying home. I’m finally at a point where I can do some blogging.
It’s amazing how suddenly and drastically this pandemic has changed our daily lives. Peter and Amina came home from school on Thursday, March 12th like any other day. That Friday morning, we learned that at 11 pm on Thursday, the governor of Michigan had declared that all schools would be closed for three weeks starting on Monday. Our local schools had a 2-hour delay due to a snowstorm, but then were cancelled altogether. So, without any warning, the kids were out of school for three and a half weeks. (Realistically, I’m expecting it to be longer, but no announcement has been made yet.)
The second of the three weeks that school was cancelled was supposed to be spring break. For everyone’s sanity, I decided to treat this period as a cross between homeschooling and vacation. I jumped into homeschooling right away and gave all the kids lessons to do that Friday. I’m not giving Peter and Amina as much work to do as if they were fully homeschooled, just enough to keep their brains engaged, keep them learning, and give some structure to their days. This past week (our first full week home), we did lessons Monday through Thursday. I was already planning to take Friday off, but I was so sick that I spent most of the day in bed. Next week, I’m going to try doing lessons Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Wednesday off. That way, it’ll be two days on, one day off, two days on, two days off. For me, having a balance between structure and flexibility is crucial, and I think that schedule gives a better balance than four days straight of working hard to keep four kids on track with lessons, followed by three consecutive days of much-less-structured time.
I rode out the early stages of the the pandemic hitting the United States being sick myself, but with strep. Although I’m usually pretty healthy and can generally fight off a cold within a few days without feeling too bad, this strep hit me hard. I was sick for ten days, three of which I spent mostly in bed, unable to function. The first antibiotic I was given didn’t do the trick, but the second one seems to have taken care of it. (I have one day of medication left to finish, but I feel normal again.) I have a new appreciation for how nasty a bacteria strep is.
For Lent, I’d decided to divide up the Daily Decalogue of Pope St. John XXIII and focus on each item for four days. Wednesday, March 11th was the first day that I was going to concentrate on the fourth item, “Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring all circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes.” Adapting to circumstances ended up being a far greater task than I’d anticipated, as that was the day I was first laid low by strep. Two days later (while still focusing on item 4) was the first day the big kids were out of school. There has been plenty of adapting since then, to cancellations of all kinds and shortages of items at the grocery store, among others.
Being sick, it was honestly rather helpful to have outside-the-home events cancelled, because I wasn’t up to dealing with them anyhow. For nine days, I stayed home except for going to the doctor, and I didn’t really miss going out. However, now that I’m feeling better, and as this time of isolation lengthens, I probably will start to miss going out and seeing people in real life instead of on my computer screen.
Brandon from Humans of New York said this is like the world war of our generation. In these early stages of the pandemic, I’m reminded of the beginning of World War I, when everyone thought it would be over by Christmas. No one expected it to drag out for years and have so many casualties.
On the positive side, with all this staying home, Clara is now potty-trained. She hasn’t worn diapers during the day pretty much since this staying-home started and hasn’t had an accident in five days or more (I haven’t been keeping track; I was sick). I’m still putting her in diapers at night but they’ve been staying dry for the past several days.
I have a list of blog posts I’ve been wanting to write for quite some time. I’m hopeful that I’ll find time to do more writing soon.
Sky Blue Pink Roses 