SLO County schools are reopening. For many beleaguered parents, it’s a hallelujah moment
Central Coast parents, the Holy Grail of the red tier is in our grasp: SLO County K-12 schools can now reopen, with modifications!
For many, the words “schools reopening” are like the thundering crescendo of a church choir erupting into an enthusiastic rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus. Dreary clouds part, a glittering rainbow shoots down from the heavens, and doves fly in formation.
For all the reasons both science and our hearts tell us, our kids need to be able to safely return to in-person instruction, and forward progress on virus mitigation is undeniably a good thing.
Aside from the clear win for our children and their education, there is healthy, selfish elation in this milestone.
Parents, you didn’t sign up to be a home school educator overnight on top of life’s regularly scheduled shenanigans. But you did it!
You did it all from your kitchen table while bouncing a toddler on your hip, sitting through Zoom meetings that really should have been emails, all while disinfecting your Instacart delivery.
You’ve been balancing spinning plates while walking a tightrope in your bathrobe in the background of a Google Meet for the better part of a year. Pat yourself on the back, mom. You’re allowed to be ecstatic about inching toward normalcy!
Is it safe?
On the flip side, there are others with reasonable trepidation at the prospect of reopening.
Every time you turn on the news, you’re fed a new horror of another outbreak or mutation. Add fact-checking every COVID news update to your 10-hour workday, while learning the devil language of Common Core. You know entirely too much about conspiracy theories, but still haven’t been able to find any real, unbiased answers, and have officially given up on this “new math.”
As of the first week of March, 225 school employees and 286 students had tested positive for the virus since the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year in SLO County. So if the thought of dropping Little Jimmy off every morning to a potential petri dish from hell is the last thing you want to do, that’s OK!
Go easy on yourself, dad. You’re allowed to be nervous in a time when misinformation is as contagious as the pathogen. Don’t let anybody tell you not to worry about a global health crisis.
A line in the sandbox
Another thing about this pandemic: Just like that, it gave breeders another reason to draw a line in the sandbox.
Formula versus breastfeeding wasn’t enough, so we had to go to war with one another over screen time, GMOs and vaccines against diseases like whooping cough and measles. So is it shocking that there’s a clash over something as important as the return to school post-pandemic?
A Shonda Rhimes Thursday night soap opera has nothing on the dramatics you’ll live stream during a school board meeting.
However, that line in the sandbox is on a playground we are all in together. We survived this last year, and over half-a-million other Americans didn’t.
We get the opportunity to move forward when a lot of our friends and neighbors never stood a chance against the virus and subsequent public policy fumbles that made our collective suffering so much more difficult. What we do with this next tier of freedom — one that has been denied to so many — has a lot to do with the empathy and grace we extend not just to each other, but to ourselves.
As we venture into the Red Tier World, get out from behind our screens and shake off our contagion-induced hibernation, remember that everyone around you just spent a year in their own version of Hades.
When you see that dad you got into a heated mask debate with on Facebook, wave hello. He probably wanted to cry over the same word problem you hit a wall with, and maybe wasn’t on his best behavior that day.
The annoying Karen who has been on a crusade since Day One to reopen, with no regard for science-based evidence? For all you know, she works 60 hours a week and is doing her best to keep up with the torrential downpour of evolving facts and ridiculous fiction. She’s highly imperfect, just like you, and can only do her best.
Is that one mom really an evil demon, or were you just projecting your own crazy onto her, because the most exciting thing you’ve been able to do over the better part of 12 months is chat with the cashier at Vons behind a plexiglass barrier?
From pandemic to election to heated protests, wildfires, shootings and insurrection, it would be impossible for any of us to look back on this last year and say, “Yes, I handled all of that perfectly.”
We just spent an entire year in purple-tier purgatory — a confusing and isolated bubble of anxiety that is not compatible with any resemblance of healthy human life. But you did it, bathrobe and all.
So as you double back because you left your daughter’s mask on the kitchen counter and are now late for both class and work, go easy on yourself.
This transition will be anything but perfect — much like parenthood itself — and that is totally OK.
Sandee Hunt-Burns is a millennial mom and digital storyteller, sharing musings through the mish-mashed lens of a moderate progressive living, working and playing on the Central Coast.