You know it’s interesting how we as adults, for the most part, tend to have an inclination towards the negative.  I’m not sure why but we love to focus on what we’ve lost, what’s been “taken away” from us, what’s being suggested and imposed upon us, and can sometimes allow fear to guide our decisions because we just don’t have all the facts (and frankly we’re used to having facts… we like facts… at least what we comfortably believe are facts in our own minds).

But what’s hilarious is that comparatively, a lot of us didn’t really like the rat race we were previously a part of before all this happened.  It was merely the devil we knew; it was a comfortable, predictable, level of the inferno.

Lately I’ve started reviewing, because it’s been long enough now that we can start to pause and do that, what positive things have happened as a result of this whole pandemic environment.

And, I’m starting to see the lessons my 5 year old daughter has had there, waiting for me, all along.

Many who know me also know it’s very rare for me to talk about my kiddo in a public, electronic environment; we have always kept her off of social media and I may reference her in general on here once in a while, but that’s it.  It’s a personal decision we made as a family, but today I’m going to diverge from that because I think it’s for the greater good in our current environment.

So.  She started kindergarten on Monday.

Her school has very strict standards, and luckily her campus is not one building, but many spread out, so she’s not sharing re-circulated air with anyone except her class and the other K class (separate room, same ventilation system).  They temp each kid every morning from the car before they get out and record it, and no one besides staff and kids are allowed in the buildings.  To include parents.

Everyone, even the kindergarteners, are required to wear masks the whole day except while eating lunch– which they eat at their desks, and they have to bring it in every day (because no one else if you recall, not even outside food vendors, are allowed on the campus).  They can use the playground, but only with their own class, and its throughly wiped down in-between each session.

Their desks are socially-distanced, and they each have their own cubby for not only their backpacks but separate ones for workbooks as well.  They have to bring in all of their own supplies because no one can share pencils or crayons anymore– so on the first day our 41 lb, 43 in, lanky-ass kid hauled in a FULL backpack and two additional bags of stuff.  The water fountains are off too, so they also have to bring all of their drinking water for the whole day.

So as an adult, what did you take from that?

Stomach churning maybe.  Comparison to our good ol’ days, and maybe some sadness associated with it.  Why would you put a kid through that.  That sounds awful.  Perhaps many emotions like that?

I’ll be honest, as a parent, I (I should say we, but I won’t presume to write about my husband’s feelings; though they often mirror my own) too was trepidatious and rolling through all of these emotions, because we always hope we’re doing the right thing.

Because we want them to have the good experiences we had.

But.  If there’s one thing I do know, it’s my kid (at least right now), and I know she’s a very social kid and five months with mom, even doing homework, wasn’t cutting it.  So we were willing to try because of the safety measures in place, the opportunity was there, and most importantly, because we knew it was the right decision for her.

So for her first day of kindergarten, in a new school, with a new teacher and new classmates, a parent didn’t walk her in.  We waited in the car line, pulled up, and rolled down both passenger windows (her car seat is on the back passenger side).  We both had our masks on in the car.  The principle, a lady she’s only met once, now in a mask, came up and greeted her by name (we have window signs), wanded her forehead to take her temperature, and then asked me the few health questions I was prepared for and knew were coming.  I responded accordingly.

She then opened the door, and my kid put on her own backpack and grabbed her bags of stuff she needed to haul in, had her backpack wiped down at a station outside the school while she sanitized her hands, picked up her stuff, and walked back to her classroom with an escort.

I yelled from the open car window that I loved her and was super proud of her, and she turned around and, putting down her bags for a minute, gave me two big thumbs up.

I could tell she was grinning like a fool under her superman mask, cause she unconsciously moves her shoulders a certain way when she’s really, genuinely, happy.  Secretly I hope she never realizes she does that, because it makes me smile every time.

Now reading that experience, as adults, we think again, Jeeeeesus H …., why are you putting your kid through that??  Lots of negative emotions bubble up.  Just like we’ve seen in the media, and that nag in our heads as well.

Because we focus on loss.  And fear.

Like most of us, I haven’t really had any time to breathe, let alone accomplish anything else, this last half a year.  Yet on this first day of coveted silence, my thoughts dwelled on my kid.  Was this the right thing?  So many things were different; so many things we didn’t have to do when we were kids.  I kept catching myself looking at the clock through my work, waiting to pick her up.  Waiting with the mixed emotions of an adult.

I pulled up in line.

They read the sign on my dashboard, and radioed back to her classroom it was her turn.  She came out with (thankfully) just her book bag now, emptied of all her supplies save her water bottle and her lunchbox, still masked up in her superman mask.

And she waved, big and happily.

She got in.

Me:  “Hey buddy, how was your day??”

– commence small and hopeful, terrified, pause from me–

And then it came out, like a volcano erupting.

Do you know what she saw?  What the 5 yr old saw?

Her:  “MOM!!  It was SO cool!!  We got to go to the playground TWICE, and we did this worksheet about counting and I got all of them right AND I made a friend because I helped her open her glue stick (socially distanced) cause she didn’t know how to twist it from the bottom and I got to pick how I put all my stuff in my pencil box and did you know I get my OWN desk???  There is this cool slot and I put all MY stuff in there and I don’t have to share with anyone and it has my name on it and shapes but the shapes aren’t buttons just pictures but thats ok I guess but it would be cooler if they were buttons and can I have a sunbutter (which she’s previously hated it btw) sandwich because the kid across from me had sunbutter and we can’t have peanut butter so I’d really like that and my teacher is really really nice and did you know we went to the playground TWICE??  TWICE!!!  At two different times!!  Hey can we listen to the Dragon* playlist in the car?”

• The 5 year old saw that she finally got to go to a playground for the first time in almost half a year.
• She got to talk to people her own age, and she didn’t care if they were 6 feet away or wearing masks.
• She got to help someone and feel empowered because she knew a small bit of knowledge she could share, and she made a new friend because of it.
• She was so PROUD of herself for carrying all of her stuff into her classroom, and finding her cubby on her own.
• She was so PROUD of herself for remembering her water bottle, and re-packing her lunch box, and getting to choose what she ate in what order, all on her own.  (instead of having snacks dictated to them like in a pre-school setting, or frankly, at home)
• She was so PROUD of herself for organizing her pencil box the way she thought would suit her best, and storing it in her own desk.
• She was so PROUD of herself that she could write all the numbers they’d selected to learn that day, because to her chagrin we’d worked on them all summer (and a certain teacher friend I know may have helped supplement me with work for her as well 😉 ).

The 5 year old didn’t give two rat’s asses she had to wear a mask all day; it never even came up (we found her a super cozy superman one btw).  In fact, she gave me her whole initial dissertation IN her mask, as she’d completely forgotten she had it on.  I had to ask her if she wanted to take it off as we drove away.

Despite all the adult negative that could be construed from the earlier drop-off description, what I see now are family breakfasts in the mornings since we all have to leave at the same time (a.k.a also getting to see daddy in the mornings).  I see my kid joyous, empowered, and genuinely excited to go to school.  I see her proud of herself.

I see the lesson of resiliency and positivity kids have to teach us. 

She didn’t care about wearing a mask, she cared about getting to go to the playground again.  She focused on what she GOT to do, what she’d gained, and freely accepted we have to adapt to both survive and live our best lives.  

To her, it was no big shakes.  You just gotta go forth and conquer man.

I think back in history, of course to the obvious ones like WWI, The Great Depression, WWII, and wow, how many other examples from then till now.  When has there *really* been a normal?  When have the tides of change not continually come and swept us up, forcing us to adapt, or be left behind.

What about kids doing nuclear drills under their desks?  What about technology daily changing how we learn, how teachers teach (and also attempting to keep phones out of the classrooms, etc.)?  What about learning Pearl Harbor had just been bombed, and suddenly you didn’t talk to your spouse for months or maybe years?  What about having your loved one spit on when they returned home from a war they may not have believed in in the first place?

What about being an ROTC cadet, already contracted but not yet commissioned**, and watching the twin towers fall from a computer feed at your student job before class your Junior year while your Nokia cell phone was ringing with a message to go home and change out of your uniform NOW (we were required to wear them for our military classes on civilian campuses for ROTC)– and suddenly realizing the life you’d just signed a contract for and committed to was about to change very, very drastically.

Now isn’t any different.

And like always, it’s what we do with our time and how we approach it that counts.  That last experience was mine.  I graduated and commissioned into the Air Force two months after the 2003 invasion; like many others I’d signed a contract in times of peace, and then walked into a war.  And, I honored it.  Those times changed my life, and now looking back, I’m very grateful for the experience and for the knowledge of how to learn and adapt under duress.

In the end, it seems we can choose to be fearful, or we can choose to be grateful.  This is in no way making small of anyone who has perished from this virus; rather its a way to honor their memories by living the best way we can in today’s environment, and being grateful for joys that we may have forgotten -how- much we enjoy (like playgrounds).

It means family breakfast, and entertaining many, many dissertations about dragons; more family time, bike rides, and new adventures because the old stand-by’s are gone.  Extended story time, longer movie nights, sleeping a little later if possible because hey no commute; building volcanoes, looking up how big whale eyeballs are or what brains look like, cooking, -and- seeing how incredibly resilient our kids are.

It means wondering what positive effects this time will have on them, instead of dwelling on the perceived negative that their childhood wasn’t like ours.

So what?

On day two of kindergarten, our daughter got up, dressed herself, brushed both her teeth and her hair (the latter needs work I’ll admit), and marched downstairs.  She puffed herself up, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Now you’re looking at an OFFICIAL kindergartener.”

There are a million reasons why the decision for her to go to school could be right or wrong, and in the end we’ll never really know because you can’t prove a negative.

But for a parent, looking at her “official kindergartener” after her confident declaration, I couldn’t be prouder of her, or more thankful for what she’s both taught me and reminded me of in the last few days.

I’m tired of looking backward.

I think I’ll go talk to my kid instead, and discuss the way forward.

 

*How To Train Your Dragon; she’s obsessed with all three movies, the netflix bridge series, and the spinoffs.  I couldn’t recommend them higher for anyone in her age range… or mine 😉

**So in ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps), you go to the equivalent of boot camp between your Sophomore and Junior year of college.  You have to sign up for military class and a leadership laboratory just like any other class, and up until you complete boot camp and sign your contract you can drop it like any other class.  After you’ve contracted, if you do not complete school (lets say you drop out your senior year for example), you then must still fulfill your contract and enter the military in the Enlisted Corps to serve out your contracted time (this was at my time, the process may have chanced since).  This is not a commentary on Officer vs Enlisted Corps, it’s merely information on how the ROTC route works should someone decide to commission that way, as I did.  Why this is relevant in the story, is because 9/11 happened for me after I’d already contracted, but before I’d commissioned (a.k.a. I could not longer bow out of military service if I wanted to, even though I was still a student).  When I’d decided to join the Air Force, it was during a time of peace, and at that age you sometimes don’t extrapolate out the gravity of your decisions.  However I commissioned into a time of war; and though it was scary at the time, I’m grateful now for the person I am as a result.  I’m sure you’re seeing the correlation to the story here 😉