The Art of Becoming

I balk at screen time for my children. This is my membership card to parenthood: television disdain. Don't get me wrong, I personally love the tv, love binge watching shows, and we have a standing tradition of Friday as Family Movie Night. But the kids can get so locked in to only wanting the tv, that we had to draw a line. Prior to quarantine we had a rule in our house: no screen time on school days. Get your homework done, practice your instrument, play outside with friends. Now in the time of Coronavirus where screens provide the distance learning? There's no attendance at a school building on screen days. Things have really gone south. One day during quarantine, the kids wanted to watch tv. This day was feeling exactly the same as the last 27 days - a blur of days running together. But since it was Earth Day, I was feeling generous and earthy, so I told them they could watch the Jane Goodall documentary mid-afternoon. The mere mention of possible screen time was enough t...

We have no shortage of lessons to be learned while stuck at home together. Long ago, back when people went to the store with children and we had no fear of disease transmission, I took my three children to Target. This is not advisable: don't take three children to Target. After 6.5 years of having three children, I still haven't learned this truism. *sigh* I let them play in the toy section. Again, do as I say, not as I do. Don't let children play in the toy section at Target. Only bad things can happen. If I remember correctly, I was looking for a desk lamp and light bulb for Sean's room. I was trying to entice him to keep his bedroom desk clean so that he could do homework there. (How silly I was! Why would he ever need a desk at home to do his work?) I was also looking for a birthday present for Audrey's friend's birthday coming up. This was back in the day when children celebrated birthdays with their friends. In person. I remember coming circling t...

It's hard enough for me to understand the contours of this global pandemic. I think it's even harder for the kids. I've heard them putting it into games of tag: kids: If you get tagged, then you have the Coronavirus and you die. Sheesh. Or they've tried making it personal: Audrey: If the Coronavirus was a person, I would be really angry at them. me: Why's that? Audrey: Because why did it have to happen now? Over my birthday and Sean's birthday, and Easter, and our trip to Disney World? Tears come in the most unexpected places. One night when I thought they were all asleep, I went to the top of the stairs to turn off the hallway light. The moment I did it, I heard both girls asking me to turn it back on. They had been laying there for over an hour, not sleeping, and when I spoke to them, they each teared up. Audrey: I'm just really sad that we're not going back to school. Frankie: I just can't go to sleep. I keep trying, and I'...

I have heard people in an older generation from mine discuss the benefits of simpler times. "Back when we were kids..." and extol the virtues of playing outside, running free, unscheduled hours of time where they came up with their own games. Some of those same people have now said that this will be the same for my children. They are now getting the unstructured freedom that quarantine has to offer. I don't fully disagree. With my children currently on a break from the schooling-at-home (or Crisis Schooling, as one friend is calling it) they are achieving new levels of unscheduled freedom, or as they like to call it: boredom. For example: Ping pong paddles for Easter have proven to be a big hit. Do we have a ping pong table? No, we do not! Have people been playing ping pong? Eh - maybe once or twice. But what's really taken their attention has been bouncing the ping pong ball on the paddle repeatedly to see who can get the most hits without dropping the ball. Yester...

My dad had open heart surgery on March 12. Since then it's been a waiting game to see how his body will heal. The first couple days were torture for him: every breath in or out held pain, it was difficult to walk, and worst of all, it was excruciating for him to laugh. He is a man that was born to laugh. I remember being a little girl and waiting for the moment that my dad would walk through the front door at the end of his work day. We never knew what kind of day he'd had at his law office until we all sat down for dinner and we'd hear him tell my mom stories about the cases he worked on. But for the first 20-30 minutes of being home, he was pure joy. He would walk through the front door, briefcase in hand, black suit coat hung over his arm, and he would sing loudly: I'm home! I'm home! We're going to have some fun. We're going to have a good time. Fun! Fun! Fun! Every time, same words, same tune. This was the cue for my siblings and me to run ...

Where are we now? By my count, this is day 18 of quarantine. 18 days of the world turned on its head: kids not in school, no soccer practice or games, no dance class, no gymnastics. 18 days of the new normal we've been asked to adjust to. In that time I have felt a mounting panic; my dad had open heart surgery 18 days ago, and he was hospitalized while his body recovered. The hospital is a place crawling with germs. He needed to be there, so he could begin to breathe on his own again, and begin to walk the halls slowly of his own accord. He needed the life saving measures that the doctors and nurses provided. It also put him inside a germ hotel. Now as he recovers at home, he seemingly has pneumonia, diagnosed from televideo doctor appointment, and my mom, The Nurse, listening to his heart from home. He has a cough, a wheeze, and the doctor prescribed antibiotics and an inhaler he can use three times a day. He says he's getting better, but the cough and wheeze hangs on. Of ...

Because we live in St. Louis, my kids are growing up in close proximity to their cousins. They are roughly around the same age, and they are all in the same grade level at the same school. It's pretty idyllic. The second grade teacher this past year told me that my daughter and nephew often function like twins in the classroom - both the familiarity and comfort, and then sometimes the desire to break away from that familiar person to do their own thing. As luck and genetics would have it, for each child I have, my brother and sister-in-law have the same age child, but of a different gender or sex. I see gender as a socially constructed reality, and I see where stereotypes about the differences between men and women come from. I don't see anything wrong with naming the ways boys are different from girls. Part biology, part genetics, part nature, part nurture, there are millions of reasons why our kids display the personalities and talents they do. However, I do think it's ...