Sunday, June 28, 2020

The Morning Work

She howled and cried. All because of a little math. To be fair, she was in the middle of playing one of her favorite online games on Roblox. And to be fair to us, we were only asking for 20 minutes of math. And 20 minutes of reading. And 20 minutes of writing. With a dash of science and art here and there, all for what we call the morning work. 

This kind of visceral response doesn't happen every day thankfully. Sometimes it's Bryce our youngest who reacts this way. Sometimes it's our oldest Beatrice. School has been out now for a few weeks, but the summer schoolwork continues. And for the most part, they dive in and do it and have a little fun along the way.

I can't say I don't blame them. At least, sometimes. I mean, they still have plenty of free time to play every day, however restricted due to safety concerns and coronavirus. When my wife Amy and I grew up, there seemed to be a lot more summertime freedom for us. No electronics or video games, just hot summer days and nights, maybe swimming in a pool, lake or ocean if we were lucky, maybe a snow cone or an ice cream along the way. Running around or riding our bikes with our friends from dawn to dusk. 

I remember going to summer school, at least until Proposition 13 was passed in 1978, and that ended the fun funded summer learning way back when. I also remember going to bible summer day camp way back then, but that went south the day I was scared to death to ask to go to the bathroom and ended up peeing my pants while attempting to glue together an Adam and Eve felt project.

So many mixed summer memories from my childhood. Not all bad, but still, compared to some of what we experienced, this pandemic summer life for our girls is pretty safe and boring. Amen to that. 

Even though our summer vacation plans went awry the middle of March when the lockdowns started, we're still fortunate to have employment, food on the table and a roof over our heads; we're doing okay. Either way, the summer schoolwork we continue for our girls isn't anything new. We've been doing that the past few years, at home and on any vacation we take. We just want the girls to keep up on some basics, especially Bea, who needs and has benefited from more one-on-one time with us. 

Plus, there's our P.E. (physical education) time outside at least once day, going to a park, riding our bikes, going for walks, adopting tadpoles and releasing frogs, going to the beach to boogie board, and other fun physical activities. And now this includes social distancing playdates with some of their friends, or as much distance as kids understand, which isn't much. Wash your hands!

That's been emotionally and psychologically important, seeing and playing with their friends when they can. Both girls play Minecraft as well with some mutual friends, and as far as I'm concerned, that's their D&D of my youth, building realms and adventuring across them. Super duper cool. 

Because America gets such a poor grade overall in mitigating the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), and too many people won't wear their masks in public and social distance, and because I have a somewhat compromised respiratory system, the kinds of travel we're willing to do is limited right now. We're so grateful of the past travel we've been able to do with the girls, and there will be future travel, but it still sucks where the world is at today. We've also thought about in-person summer day camps for the girls, some that have actually opened up, but the risks are just too high with the recent spikes in coronavirus cases. 

The summer agreement we have with our children then, which we negotiated with them in order to make them a part of this ongoing homeschool mandate, to have them take ownership of their "fun" learning, is that they have to do at least one hour of work each day during the week. Twenty minutes each (give or take) of reading, writing and math. This also includes science and art and other fun learning projects like math puzzles, making slime, gardening, painting, construction and more. It also includes putting together projects that have been sitting in our closet for years like a fun planetarium that maps the stars in a dark room, or playing cool logic games like Labyrinth, which Amy actually found in someone's free yard giveaway. Plus, there are tons of online learning activities we'll continue to explore.

Once the summer is over, Amy and I and millions of other parents will most likely need to continue homeschooling our kids through distance learning, balancing our lives and livelihoods. Whatever does happen next, the morning work sets up the day for play, and we wouldn't want it any other way. 


Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts:

We Shared Blue Genes
Agree to Disintegration

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Sunday, June 21, 2020

We Shared Blue Genes

Jerry,

It’s been a few years since I first saw your obituary online. It was less than 30 words in total. It said you died on January 2, 2012, in a hospital in Redding, CA, and that you had lung cancer. You were only 69 years old. There was nothing much else descriptive. Nothing about family or friends. Just a short passage about your passing. 

On the day before Father’s Day this year, over eight years later, I looked for it again. I found the listing, but when I clicked on the link, the page no longer existed. I searched for it but I couldn’t find it anywhere else. 

You had died seven months before our dad, and almost a full year before our mom. I've never really thought much about how close all the deaths were, because I didn't even know about yours until a few years afterward. 

The last time I saw you I was 13 and my sister Kristen was 11. I'm sure you remember that day. It was supposed to be a visitation day for you, although I don’t remember what time of the year it was. I only remember paralyzing fear from what was about to transpire. We had already told a judge that we didn't want to see you anymore and you must've been notified about that.

You came to our front door dressed in a untucked light collared shirt and blue jeans (I think). You may have also been wearing that a straw cowboy hat you wore the few times we were with you since the divorce. I do remember you held a grocery bag full of dirty carrots you said you had pulled from your garden and were for us.

Kristen and I practiced what we were going to say, but what seemed like an eternity went by before anybody said anything. She stood slightly behind me, one hand on the back of my shirt. 

I'm not sure what I said, if anything. You must have sensed how we felt, because you said, "So, you don’t want to see me anymore?"

I nodded slowly. I felt Kristen pull on my shirt. Then you set the carrots down and said, "Goodbye kids."

And that was it. All I remember. We never heard from you again. At least I didn't. Decades later you and Kristen actually got together and talked. She told me she was glad that happened. 

But you and I never did. And so, I never really knew you, Jerry. I only remember you as a man who was supposed to be Dad, who smoked and drank a lot. Who was either very angry at Mom, at us, or very quiet and depressed. I was always so scared of you, too, because you hit Mom, and I always worried you'd hit all of us. I could only fantasize of standing up to you, of yelling at you and hurting you for hurting Mom. 

I'll never forget the fights and the pain you caused Mom. Kristen and I would sometimes huddle together in my room to wait for the fighting to stop. Or, I'd go hide in the treehouse you had built for me years earlier. I'll never forget how miserable you made us. The shitty things you did. 

There were rare moments of feeling like a family, and the last Christmas we spent together was one of the happiest I'd ever seen you. You told us all you were sorry. You may have even cried a little when you said to us, "There's no place like home." 

I never really knew you, though. And yet, I remember that I never seemed to be the boy you wanted either. My severe allergies and asthma hindered my limited athletic abilities at the time. I was skinny and shy and only remember feeling disappointment from you back then. 

I didn't hate you then, though. I was scared and angry then, but I didn't hate you. No, that came after you and Mom divorced and we found ourselves in a new and abusive house with a man who hurt us all. Mom was just trying to find stability for us, but we had no idea he would emotionally, psychologically and sexually abuse us. That was a scary two and a half years.

I know that's not your fault, but it was compounded by the fact that we still had to see you for those years, which we never enjoyed. I never felt like you really wanted us around anyway. That you really didn't like us. You probably wouldn't have helped us even if you knew what was going on. That's why I started to hate you.

But none of that matters anymore. Not one fucking bit. Not then, and certainly not now. Because I never saw you again after that day on our porch when I was 13. You were just my birth father. 

And not once after that day did you try to contact me. Not once. That's why I hated you more. Our second step-father, the one whose name we took when he adopted us a few years after he and Mom got married, he was the one we called Dad and will always call Dad. I miss him and Mom every single day.

I know I didn't try to contact you either, but you were my birth father, and I your son. Why didn't you try?  What the hell happened to you in your life to make you that way? You never knew how hard it was for us until Mom married Dad. How hard it was for me at the end of high school and well into my 20's. How I had severe anxiety attacks, and how smoked and drank too much, just like you did. How miserable I made my first failed marriage. The shitty things I did. 

You never saw me graduate college, to be the first in our family to do so. You never saw me move to Santa Cruz where I met the love of my life. How I traveled the world with her. How we had two daughters of our own. How I'm a father who loves his children, who cares about them deeply and who wants them to always be emotionally and physically safe. How my wife and I are raising them to be strong, smart, independent and inclusive women and people. How we're doing it all in the middle of a global pandemic.

You never knew any of that, and I never knew you. Never really knew why you struggled. Never knew why you didn't have the capacity to care for yourself, or for us. The only thing I ever really knew is that we shared blue genes, and that I overcame them, and you did not. 

I am sorry you died alone, Jerry. I really am. And for the first time in my life, I forgive you. Happy Father's Day. 



Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts:

Agree to Disintegration

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Sunday, June 14, 2020

Agree to Disintegration

"Truth is after all a moving target
Hairs to split,
And pieces that don't fit
How can anybody be enlightened
Truth is after all so poorly lit..."

–Rush, Turn the Page


In the very near future, they'll know. They'll know who Santa really is, and the Shelf Elves, and the Easter Bunny. We fell into the same trap that many parents do, telling their kids lies in the name of longtime, seemingly harmless cultural traditions. 

Heck, both our daughters may even already know, and are just letting the magic of childhood ride out as long as it can. We tell them the truth otherwise about everything else. Or, more accurately, we tell them our truths.

Yes, our truths. Truths that have been defined and refined since we were children. My wife and I are fairly intelligent people, fairly well-informed. Like everyone though, we have our biases, and yet are still socially progressive on issues related to racism and sexism. We believe we can be objective when weighing the facts as we know them about any issue. We empathize, we sympathize, we fight the good fight. But we're still biased and our truths are tainted by those same biases. 

Don Quixote battled windmills because he truly believed they were dangerous giants. Daredevil "Mad" Mike Hughes was killed in a rocket launch, one where planned to finally determine for himself if the earth was as flat as he believed it to be. We all believe what we want to believe if it fits our narrative at that point in time. We may all carry emotional baggage with us throughout our lives, but can't forget the added weight of confirmation bias in our psychological backpacks.

Someone I know shared a social media meme filled with conspiracy theories including the fact that coronavirus was created on purpose. Our government has taken away our freedoms to control us during this pandemic. The peaceful protests were a ruse for the #BlackLivesMatter movement to purposely loot and destroy property. So many others as well. I'm probably not even writing them out again correctly because they were so outlandish in the first place, with little to no factual bases as far as I knew. This based on reporting and historically accurate essays debunking these theories. Unfortunately, media perpetuates them, our leaders perpetuate them, either to inform or to misinform, more the latter of late. Our own education system has downplayed, even erased, systemic racism and inequality activities and issues since the founding of this country.  

I asked this person if she really believed all these things in the meme she posted. She responded she did. I was saddened, but didn't respond. I only thought about her children and grandchildren, and what they will believe and what their truths will ultimately be. 

These days some people use the phrase "agree to disagree" a lot. A difference in opinion and robust debate are important -- keeping each other honest, as they say, and seeing things from different perspectives. But, how can we agree to disagree when there's no basis of fact on what it is we actually disagree on? How do we debate purposefully destructive propaganda that's distributed to diffuse debate? This is true no matter where you find yourself along the great political and/or ideological divide. Instead, we sit around our tribal campfires scrawling our truths in the dirt, howl at the moon and to hell with everybody else. 

We can even mask it further by saying we choose love instead of choosing to take a stand on an issue. Both are equally valid in their own right, but not when it's about indirectly blaming those who choose to take a stand on something that affects their lives and livelihoods. My wife articulated it well:

Our hope is that people choose to live their lives with love and light. And that people can still do so in the worst of conditions. What is inherently false is that all people choose their circumstances. Unfortunately, one of our deep rooted cultural norms is to blame a person for their circumstances and not to consider the overlying foundation. We are privileged to have had the opportunity to work hard, provide for our families and take time to enjoy life. This is not the reality for all people and the complexities of why it is not a reality is part of why people choose apathy. We all have a choice, yes. I hold people in high regard that choose to go into the darkness with hearts of love for the betterment of all lives.

Conspiratorial propaganda is as old as the spoken word, and if we don't look for whatever facts are available to either support or refute a "reported" truth, then how can we agree to disagree? Like ever? There may be a nobility in seeing the world differently, of challenging the status quo and finding new truths. But when we agree to disintegration, there will never be a greater societal or spiritual connection for our children and grandchildren, nor an investment in healing the humanity of today and tomorrow. We need to agree it is all our responsibility. 

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Sunday, June 7, 2020

The Teacher Parade

Everything changed for our kids on March 13. That's when the principal of our school sent the email out to all the parents stating: 

The health and safety of our community is always our highest priority.  Today we demonstrated that clearly by dismissing students from school for the next week.  All public schools in our county will be closed from March 16-20, 2020.

This due to the impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) on our lives. He ended the email with I look forward to seeing the Wildcats back on campus soon. Looking back, we obviously never went back, participating in nearly three months of distance learning from our public school. After every new day of working from home and schooling from home, my wife Amy and I got a little bit better with our cadence and working with our two daughters. Amy did most of the heavy lifting as she's always done, and thankfully since there's been no business travel for me since early March, I invested nearly every morning in our daughters' school work.

The girls' teachers also finally found their rhythm after the first few weeks of trying to figure out what the heck to do, how to teach online and how to ensure they were giving as much support per kid that they could. At first, they sent each family a sample checklist of work to do and a sample schedule of when to do it, and soon found that each family had their own unique situations and schedules. Soon after they moved to assigning work to the kids -- core reading, writing, math, science and more. I can't imagine what that transition was like for teachers, kids and parents not used to working this way, since I've worked virtually for nearly the past decade and run a virtual organization for the past five years. Of course, the reality for most parents was that school was/is a place of learning, of socializing, and also for child daycare. Add to that an after school program for kids whose parents and/or guardians worked all day. 

Then take it all away all at once. For those parents who remained employed, it became a juggling act of managing their jobs and managing their children at home. Plus, there were those families who didn't have internet at home and/or computer resources for their kids. Our school district, like many others, provided Chromebooks for families to use and tech companies donated WiFi hotspots for connectivity. We moved to virtual Zoom calls for the classes and leveraged Google Classroom for assigning work and completing it. Other outside resources were utilized as well, like Khan Academy, YouTube and others. 

Add to that families who lost their incomes and struggled to provide food and shelter for their kids. Thankfully our district provided breakfast and lunch for any children under 18 who it and will do so through the summer. 

Also, not all families got the resources or support they needed, and then there were those who just couldn't (or didn't) help their kids complete their schoolwork. Even with the support of our school district and school, and the teachers continuing to teach as best they could, it was a lot of work even for us. Their work totaled about 2-3 hours each day, being in 3rd and 5th grade, and we ensured our girls got the guidance and support they needed from us to get it all done. 

There's also a big difference between 2-3 hours of virtual learning and 6-7 hours of at-school learning, because there's been a whole bunch of time to fill in between and after. Especially when the parents are working. We also know it would've been exponentially harder if our girls were any younger. 

We did it, though. It was far from ideal and a lot of change all at once, and we still did it. We did it because we've always been invested in our girls' education. Regardless of our circumstance, it's an all-in investment for us, and we require the same from our girls. This was not what they signed up for either -- going from a pandemic to now social unrest in ever-changing world (we hope for the better). The girls have struggled with missing being at school and missing seeing their friends in person. 

The silver lining has been that, while our youngest Bryce is more autonomous with her schoolwork, her older sister Beatrice has benefited with more one-on-one attention from us helping her. That in turn prompted Bryce to want more individualized attention, which we also gave her. This hybrid world of virtual classroom instruction, virtual office hours with their teachers and our overall support definitely paid off for both girls. Again, not ideal, and we'll see what happens when we get to the next school year starting in August, knowing that our state will take a big hit in public school funding, equivalent to losing over $1,200 per student, probably even more than that. If there are in-person classes on campus again, they will be most likely smaller groups that will alternate days. 

We love our school, the teachers and the staff. The girls have been going there since preschool and we've been involved since the very beginning, especially Amy. She's also served as PTA president and vice-president for the past three years. However, because we couldn't do anything in person, the end-of-school activities and ceremonies were bittersweet. Beatrice finished 5th grade and will be going to middle school in the fall. She had a virtual "graduation" ceremony and then we drove through the school parking lot to get her leadership award certificate, club participation certificates, and her 5th grade completion certificate. Bryce will continue at the same school going into 4th grade, and her 3rd grade teacher put together a sweet awards ceremony, dubbing Bryce "Brilliant Bryce". Both their teachers worked hard at helping our kids finish as strong as possible considering the circumstances. Beatrice's band teacher also struggled to keep all the band kids engaged until the end of the year, and yet she still pulled together a wonderful virtual concert, with Bea being one fo the flute players. 

Out of all the end-of-year activities, the simultaneously most wonderful and heart-wrenching part was the teacher parade. Led by a police motorcycle escort and ending with a fire truck (one of the parents is a fireman), our principal, teachers and staff drove decorated cars from the school parking lot and down through many our school district neighborhoods. They waved at us cheering them on, and we held our signs of love and thanks proudly. In that moment, all the teachers I ever loved and cared about growing up, those who truly cared about me and who wanted me to learn and be a better human, I imagined were also riding in the cars with our girls' teachers. Tears streamed down my face and hope filled my heart for what's to come. 


Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts:

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