Back to the keyboard after a long time away

I have been silent here a long time. Transitions take quiet for me these days, solitude, reflection.

I’ve been through so many transitions. Most of us have, if we have lived very long. Even if we haven’t.

Today, my kitchen is sunny. It’s the place I love to be in the early morning, especially now the windows are cut through the back wall, the half wall has been created to let the light and view of outside in.

I’m a social worker now. The family child care downstairs is no more. A new incarnation of it is living and breathing on it’s own in Malden, where Jonah and Morgan are creating a place of their own, complete with vintage Playmobil, scavenged playdough tools, and lovely wooden blocks tidily arranged on one of our last shared purchases, a solid Community Playthings shelf.

My new work life is on the road, in the homes of others, in the public libraries, parks, in the cubicle and shared spaces of the early intervention office I now call home. I have colleagues. Someone else makes the decisions about budget, hiring, insurance, maintenance. I am free to roam the City, playing with children, talking with families, learning as I go.

After years of being grounded here in home and neighborhood, it’s a pleasure to be on the road. Sometimes it’s also a lot, moving in and out of lives not my own, which I enter and leave as gracefully as I can, not without impact or reverberation.

I’m getting older. We all are, though somehow, with 59 approaching, 60 looming large, friends retiring or contemplating it, children on their own, I am feeling the transition to something coming, not knowing how or when or what.

In the past, it’s helped to write through these transitions, to try to put into words what I’m feeling, what unsettles, what calms, to give questions shape, to try to find a way through them, less alone, even if only because the words give thoughts a place outside my mind, if only barely, here.

I have been thinking so much about what it means to be a woman, now and over time. I’ve been listening to Bell Hooks, to young writers and podcasters recommended by my daughter, to young moms and to old friends, to my sister, my mom. My middle child is transitioning, so now, I have two daughters, something I’m putting into the history of our life as I go, reconstructing memories, stories, to include that piece of her identity retroactively. Two daughters and a son, just like my family growing up, though in reverse order, with the oldest of my children a son and the youngest in my family of origin my brother.

I am drawn to transitions, to the evolution and becoming, to the loss and grief and hope and potential. So many stages and phases of life, so much change, so much growth, so much saying good-bye and wondering what’s ahead.

A lot of social work, as well as child care and teaching, has to do with supporting folks of various ages through transitions, imagining a future, supporting growth, aiming for the positive to emerge through the difficult, highlighting strengths and overcoming challenges. Keeping hope alive, connecting with the full humanity of the person, the duo, the family is at the root of so many person centered occupations, including motherhood, intimate partnership, and paid work, if you do that with heart.

I don’t know what I came to say, other than I’d like to try again, to write here, to see what happens, to explore my thoughts just slightly outside my mind, to open up the possibility of making sense and connecting, possibly, with others who might like to hear what I have to say.

Time to start the day, pack the breakfast I’ll share with the littles and their people, to ride to the office with my colleague, staying quietly in the former day care space for a short while, to talk with her about our work, our shared people, our children, what we’ll put out for the children to explore today, what puzzles or alarms us in our work, how we’re going to carry on in a world so full of challenge some days, so full of delight in other ways.

Wish me the best. I’ll do the same for you. Thanks for reading and thinking with me today. I hope to be back soon.

 

On becoming a social worker in Corona Virus Times – Mother Bear awakens from a dream state

This morning I woke with a strong urge to write. I had powerful dreams before falling asleep last night, powerful conversations throughout the week, which reconnected me with the urge for transformation at the core of human suffering and potential.

For the past month, I’ve been struggling to finish a Major Case Study for my masters in social work program. The case I’ve been writing about has stirred the mother bear in me. At times even she has reached the limits of her comprehension and coherence in making sense of this young life.

In my dreams last night, I called out, perhaps to the divine, “Too much! This is too much!”

In a talk on Jung’s beliefs about Transformation I listened to on the way to work yesterday, Murray Stein captured transformation in the image of a young person in adolescence outgrowing a suit which no longer fits, which may be too short and too tight as the young person transforms into an adult.

I think this morning about the “too muchness” of life I’ve been up against these past two years since I began my social work training. Too much comes in so many forms. Sometimes it comes in the form of too much suffering to fully comprehend, too much trauma over a short lifetime to explain. Other times it’s too much divinity to capture in the bounds of a moment or relationship. Often it’s too much to know, or learn, or understand for one mind, one lifetime, one dimension or modality or world view. Too much isolation. Too much loneliness. Too much pain and suffering to carry, or to mend, sometimes too much to survive.

What I can say now is that this is holy work. Only with connection to the spirit, with attempts to approach the mysteries of the soul, do I feel capable of honoring the fullness of the lives of those with whom I converse, play, and work in my roles as student, social worker, therapist, listener, caregiver, protector, ally, advocate, and witness.

I was reminded this week of so many steps along the path which lead me here, of moments in my life that continue to stand out, to jump out, to transform, to remind me of what is often too ethereal to hold in the threads of everyday life. Dreams help. Songs help. Art and stories and other lives and perspectives and ideas ground my personal and even transcendent moments in larger fields of both mystery and connection, of divinity, which I glimpse when I am lucky.

I can’t say more just yet. Except that the mother bear is with and in me, as she’s been, that we have important work to do, and that we are guided, not alone. Even as we are abandoned, we are held. Mystery is ever unfolding, as we are ever unfolding within it.

 

Back Again, with a kitchen redo, at last

My voice returns when I’m alone. Kids are on their own, one across the country, one across town, one in college in the Midwest. The house on Garrison Avenue is under renovations again, this time in the most disruptive of ways. I’ve been living in what feels like a U-Haul storage closet since early January, my kitchen in boxes and bureaus, the dining room I love filled with appliances and used cabinets, the doors to the kitchen, back porch, and basement blocked off until this week, when they opened them at last to let the light in.

There are new windows in the kitchen, after many years of waiting, two over the back porch, one a garden window over what will someday be the kitchen sink. The carpenters have been installing the used cabinets this week in preparation for the counter top installers who will come today to make a template. I’ve chosen tile for the wall, a luxury that has me anxious, an attempt to rectify past tile decisions all based on thrift and timeliness. This time, I want it to be tile I’ll wish to look at until I die, surrounding me as I wash dishes, make dinner for myself and those who show up to share, as I sweep the newly polished floor, make coffee and tea on the soon to be installed countertops in Eternal Calcutta Gold, a welcome shift from the off the curb side table I’ve set up beside the fridge wedged between the wall sconces in the dining room.

The project is a long time coming, thirty years or so after we bought the house, we at the time was my new husband and me. The kitchen then was somebody’s 1970s dream, dark faux wood cabinets with heavy bronze hardware, sheetrock walls to cover the original plaster and beadboard, floor to ceiling wall paper, ceiling fixtures in large decorative discs, beige linoleum countertops, floors, and backsplash, dark brown stained wood replacement trim that matched nothing in the house.

We took up layers, exposing the wood floors, cutting back the sheetrock to expose the bead board, finding a hole we covered with a piece of panelling that must have come from elsewhere in the house, and left till now, painting the cabinets a lovely custom purple and the walls a bright and beautiful orange. I chose decorative knobs of animals and vegetables to trim out the purple cabinets, a delight I imagined my growing family enjoying while we poured whatever we had into them and made the kitchen work.

In the hall this morning, there are pieces of wood trim I laid against the wall. They were collected from renovations of houses nearby by my old neighbor Neil, who grew up in the neighborhood, moved away, and came back when his parents died to take apart the house and put it back together again. Yesterday I worked with the carpenters to figure out how to replicate the original trim in my new kitchen, restoring some dignity to the space after years in 1970s limbo. The wood has been living in the rafters of the basement and under the front porch, waiting for it’s calling. We’ll see how it looks trimming out the garden window, pack porch windows, and a new door I’ve selected to let even more light in.

In the process, I’ve asked the contractor to move the original door from the kitchen to the upstairs porch to the doorway down below, replacing another 1970s improvement, an insulated metal door in a faux farmhouse style I’ve never much liked. More original trim there, if we have enough.

I would call it a labor of love, but I think, in some ways, it’s a labor of desperation. I need to prove this is my home, that this is where I live. I’m in the midst of so many life transitions, kids growing up, getting married, moving away, making their own lives, and me, here, single again, after my first post divorce attempt at cohabitation, back in school, running the day care from afar, living three summers in Western Mass, earning very little money, with no clear path to what comes next, except a degree in social work. Home, in it’s fully realized form, includes this kitchen, with the half wall knocked out, the windows opening the space to the world, garden window so I can’t forget to water the plants, cabinets with drawers and doors that work and aren’t falling off, last of the linoleum on the back stairs and basement landing finally gone.

I’ve pushed myself to the limit making it happen. My savings for grad school along with loans I hadn’t planned to take, will cover the cost, leaving me a bit short for easy living. My partner of two years moved out, just as the work was about to begin. When he returned in January and saw the chaos, he stayed a couple of hours and headed back to his rented space in Western Mass, relieved, if I can guess.

I’m hopeful that I’ll love it, that the cost won’t break me, that I’ll still feel like cooking and sharing meals when it’s done. I’ve been a hermit during the construction, using a one burner induction hot plate to boil pasta, the microwave and toaster to reheat and lightly bake. I’ve been eating through the stores of food stashed in the back bedroom and in the freezer and fridge. I’ve made only one trip I can remember to the store, where I bought my Japanese favorites, including a few vegetables, and fled. Mostly I’ve eaten on the sofa, sometimes in front of the tv. Mostly, the solo, u-haul storage unit life has suited me, but recently it’s gotten old.

I’m ready for the work to be done, to put the cans back in a cupboard, to make coffee at the counter, to look out the window as I wash my dishes, rather that in the bathroom mirror. I’m ready to have someone over for a meal or cup of tea, to linger at the table with conversation and cookies, not to be alone.

 

Today’s echoes of a dying father

Sunday afternoon I’m tired, a thing I wish I wasn’t. I rest a long time, satin eye pillow blocking the light, too much caffeine and stirring inside to fall asleep. Before getting up to try again to find the energy to finish the day, I ask my guy to rest with me. I feel in his arms like I can only wish to remember feeling in my dad’s.

I think of my guy’s tiredness the weekend before, how it irritated and scared me. I wonder, is that an echo of my dad’s certain exhaustion as he lived with leukemia the last three of the first six years of my life? Might the ripples of having been a daughter of a dying father be finding me here, again, in this latest relationship with a strong and gentle man who might also somehow leave?

We are always being left, always leaving. For each of us, the leaving must feel different, even as the experience is universal. I’m still learning to identify the feelings day by day. In the years between my father’s dying and my husband’s leaving, most of those feelings weren’t clear to me. So much was buried, or quiet, or roiling beneath the surface, bubbling over in messy ways.

Today, listening to Padraig O-Tauma read Hanif Abdurraqib’s poem, “When We Were 13, Jeff’s Father Left The Needle Down On A Journey Record Before Leaving The House One Morning And Never Coming Back,” I remembered my own moment, not as the teenager, who is the voice of Hanif’s poem, but as the mother who was driving carpool for her own teens and their friends, when the song on the car radio played. I was transported, as is the narrator in Hanif’s poem, by a memory of a moment, forever embodied in a song, to a time things came apart for me and mine, to the freedom and the dread I felt, to the strength of those feelings that day in the minivan, of being invisible or not in a minivan full of my children and their friends. Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” was Harif’s elegy (or anthem?). Mine was Ingrid Michaelson’s “Be Ok.”

That day I knew I needed out of my marriage, out of the invisibility where I too often found myself. Soon after, my husband moved out. We separated and divorced, began the next phase of our adult lives. We’d begun them together at twenty one and found our bond undone at forty two.

Each time I’ve re-partnered in the twelve years since, never long after the partner before has left, I’ve felt the leaving and the wish to be home again, in the arms of a man who might not leave, or at least not leave so abruptly or so soon as my father did. After several rounds of this, the hoping and the trying and the leaving, I’m here, noticing I do less planning for the future, feel stronger on my own, even as I’m sharing home and day to day living as much with JT as I’ve shared a home and life with anyone since my kids were young and we lived together as a family full-time. While I’m not 100% repaired, I’m Ok, no longer the pile of broken pieces seeking wholeness that day in the van.

This month I’m saying good-bye to an era, to twenty five years plus of caring for young children day to day in the family child care in my home. Before that, I tended children in schools and day care centers and camps, as a babysitter in graduate school and in my neighborhood growing up. Somewhere in there, I came to realize that impulse, to care for the children of the world, as an echo of a dying father, of the knowledge that the first six years of life, that childhood is precious, and that if a parent or a caregiver or a teacher makes a deep enough impression on a child, that impression will last a whole life long, as my father’s love has stayed with me, not in stories or a lot of memories, but in moments of strong feeling, which sometimes are fleeting and sometimes carry me away.

If anyone had ever asked me if my father had loved me, which no one ever has, I could have answered at any moment throughout my life that he had, no questions asked. Down deep, through and through, without a doubt. I have known that, in spite of, and in some ways, because of his leaving.

My dad left before I could have an argument with him that I could remember. Instead I remember him consoling me when I cried, rubbing my back as I lay on my bed. I remember him giving me a sip of his beer, from the brown, fat bottle he would set down and pick up as he played euchre with my uncles on the card table in our open garage.

I remember him leaving a few of his fried potatoes on his plate for me when he went to work each time I make fried potatoes for my children or order them in a breakfast place. This past year or two, my children have made fried eggs, something until now I’ve never eaten, and now do. I think now, that my dad ate them also, but I can’t be sure. Echoes aren’t always reliable. Their source isn’t always clear. Often (always?) they are true, as our bodies record them, as they travel over time.

Listen to Padraig O Tauma read and Ingrid Michealson sing. May you be greeted with echoes of your own, of whatever joys and sorrows you need to remember today.

Hanif Abdurraqib — When We Were 13, Jeff’s Father Left The Needle Down On A Journey Record Before Leaving The House One Morning And Never Coming Back

 

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WFDC, Finding our Way in Historic Times- Good Guys, Bad Guys, Real and Play Fighting, Death, Danger, Dying, Pregnancy, Birth, and Other things kids are sorting out

We have a lovely group of children this year, ranging from one and a half to nine and a half years old, with more school age kids in the mix this year, as their public schooling is fully remote, their families need child care, and the children need a place to be themselves with other children and away from home.

While we’ve had a solid return to being together since we reopened in July, and welcomed the last of our old friends back in September, we are aware we are living in historic times. While doing things we never imagined doing, like wearing masks all day, being outside for all our meals and much of the day, and keeping some distance, even outside when we are eating and unmasked, we are mostly happy.

The children in our care come from families able to pay the private tuition that allows us to purchase air purifiers, fancy lunch and breakfast boxes, to install a warm water faucet on the back of the house, and outlets on the porch and side yard, to invest in lighting and other equipment to make the outdoors as livable as possible as long as possible into the cooler and darker days.

We’ve got families who can purchase serious outdoor gear, from waterproof insulated boots, to heavy duty snow and rain gear, and teachers who are committed to working in new ways so we can continue to remain open as long as possible through the pandemic.

We are also mostly white, with a few brown skinned members of our community, mostly middle and upper middle class, mostly two parent families, many with some family nearby for support, with relatively stable homes, most with stable jobs, many who can work from home.

In spite of all the ways our children and community are privileged and protected, there is still a whole lot for all of us to process, from the pandemic, to the movement for racial justice, to the political difficulties our country and world are immersed in, all within our adult concerns, and many on the minds of our young children.

Besides the larger world dynamics in which we are living, each individual and family and our small community are living through the changes and challenges of our lives. We have had many new babies arrive in the last two years. Pregnancy and child birth are changes that are taken in by children and families in all kinds of ways. In our community, we have families who have lost babies at birth, and others who have struggled with fertility, and so the legacy of those losses must be present even as we celebrate the arrival of new babies in our community.

Other families have health issues that bring higher risks with the pandemic. Many of us are missing connections with our family and friends and co-workers and the routines of regular life which have been altered so dramatically since March. Some of us know people who have gotten the virus, and even some who have died.

The children are aware of all of this, in their ways.

One day a three said to her friends and me, as we were walking to the park, Maria, I don’t want to die. The other children said they did not want to die, either. The three suggested that perhaps all the friends who did not want to die could hold hands and die together.

While young children often contemplate death and it’s meaning, I can’t help wondering if the Corona virus and the way it has impacted us all, has brought this concern closer to home for our youngest.

Today a nine told of her mother getting a Covid test because of having a runny nose. Many in our community have been tested and taken their children to be tested for similar symptoms, which in the past would have been inconsequential. The same child shared later that she had a friend who had tested positive, along with her mother. When I asked how they were quarantining, this raised many questions for the child. How would her friend quarantine in her room if she was only nine? How would her friend’s family keep separate, if two of them had the virus, and two didn’t? How would this child’s family cope if someone in her family had the virus?

The child thought of details, like how to use the bathroom, how to access the kitchen and the television if the bedrooms were upstairs and the living areas were downstairs, how to sleep if the bedrooms were all on the same floor.

While younger children aren’t as likely to consider things in such detail, they are aware of how careful we are all being to keep one another safe.

Today a young three was spitting on a mirror in the day care. I asked him to stop and had him clean it up with a paper towel, after I sprayed it with disinfectant. Shortly after a young four softly let me know she had also spit in the house, though it had been in the kitchen. I thanked her for telling me, and let her know it was best not to spit in the house, but that spitting once alone in the kitchen wasn’t likely to be too dangerous.

When children forget to wear their masks, they catch themselves and one another. Last week a five came to day care. When it was time to come into the yard, he held his hand over his mouth and exclaimed, Oh, no!!

It turned out he had forgotten to wear his mask from the car to the gate, and had left it in the car. We found him a spare in his pack, he put it on, and went about his business. Still, the intensity with which the children feel their responsibility for wearing masks was palpable.

Other times the children notice when an unmasked child is inching too close to another at meal times, and remind them to move away.

Recently, after watching a visual demonstration of the spread of the virus in indoor environments, which highlighted the risks of talking for long periods of time, of singing, of shouting or talking loudly, of laughing. I was suddenly hyper-aware of how often the children were laughing hysterically, or shouting at the tables during meal times. I asked the kids often to speak in regular voices, to laugh a bit more softly. Then one day at the park, when the children were using loud voices, one of them told Izzy Maria doesn’t like them to talk loudly, and Izzy told me. I was reminded again of how much and how easily our anxiety travels, and have been careful since to check my own worries, while also enforcing reasonable boundaries.

Part of being outdoors more, of playing with sticks, of running and playing active games for much of the day, of having a large group of preschool and kindergarten children in the mix, has been play fighting and working on the ideas of good guys and bad guys.

Sometimes a child loses track of things, and shifts from play fighting and chasing to grabbing another child’s clothes, to knocking someone down, to pushing or shoving, to whacking someone intentionally or unintentionally with a shovel or rake. Sometimes one child ends up to be the sole “bad guy” in the game with all the other children running from that child. Other times a child is left out because they aren’t allowed or invited to play a role that works for them. Sometimes a younger child struggles to play with a group of older ones, and sometimes a group of older ones excludes or wishes a younger one would not play.

All of these ways of playing are patterns I’ve seen in the 32 years I’ve been caring for young children in group settings. Sometimes, as has happened this year, these dynamics/games have resulted in children getting hurt, misunderstood, left out, stygmatized, confused, afraid, and unsure.

As I was sorting out the most recent games of good guys and bad guys, chasing, pulling, stygmatizing, and mulling it over this weekend, after a productive group meeting with the children at the park on Friday and conversations with our staff, I was reflecting on how much tension and change our children are experiencing.

No wonder, I thought, that these children are practicing play fighting in a time of so much uncertainty. No wonder the tension around them and inside them and the space in the out of doors to play physically has lead to an interest in physical interactions like chasing, wrestling, and even some aggression.

As we talked on Friday with the children, it felt important to clarify some of the common patterns children wrestle with as they sort out play fighting and real fighting. We reminded ourselves not to pull on one another’s clothing or bodies, to tell one another when something one of us is doing doesn’t feel good, to get help from others, and eventually caregivers, if the first attempt with the one the child is struggling with isn’t effective.

We talked about saying stop! or I don’t like that! We talked about not running if one doesn’t want to be chased, about listening to one another when a game gets too physical or scary.

We also talked about good guys and bad guys and how we might feel about taking on those roles, about the fact that people are not good or bad, but sometimes do things they shouldn’t and sometimes do things they should.

One child talked about doing the wrong thing at home and how his mother corrected him and we all recalled times we had done something we shouldn’t have and talked about how our parents are helping us to learn to do the right thing.

We talked about how if a person plays a bad guy sometimes, they are not a bad guy, and might choose not to play a bad guy another time. We talked about how a child who pretends to be scary or bad isn’t is also loving and gentle and caring in real life.

One child told us about a time a thief took his mother’s wallet and the police didn’t catch the thief. We imagined how this might have felt scary to the child and the mommy. While the child assured us his mommy had gotten a new wallet, we could tell he still felt frightened and confused by his experience.

All this is to say, we are caring for young children in extraordinary times. Its a wonder we aren’t having more challenges with behavior and strong emotions.

I credit part of that to the loveliness of the personalities in the group and in the larger community, as well as to things like being outdoors, being allowed to play together and to take initiative, to find power in healthy ways, like making choices, building and making things, using tools, helping, and looking after one another. Rest time and healthy meals and beautiful materials and important conversations also help.

Please let us all remember the preciousness of each of our little ones. That we have the privileges of knowing one another well and over many years, of being together in as natural a way as possible, in spite of Corona Virus Times, is a tremendous gift. We must treat our children gently, love them and support them, and learn from them as they grow and live within the world that is all around them, full of turbulence and trouble, and also the beauty, kindness, and wonder.

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Early Fall Empty Nesting in Corona Virus Times with a New Beau in the House

This evening I’m feeling sensitive. It’s begun to get dark earlier. This morning in the sun, I was warm on the porch in my long sleeve t and skirt. When I went out for a walk to the bank, it was cooler than I thought. Later in the day, I left for Davis Square with a new fleece, and removed it half way there. I feel the seasons shifting moment by moment, week by week.

My daughter is in Ohio, living the college life. On a bike ride from Oberlin to Lake Erie with new friends, she found herself surrounded by Trump signs, some fifty to a yard. Meanwhile, on campus, the students and staff discuss race and white supremacy with an urgency that heightens experiences like making new friends and playing sports.

Her room here remains in disarray, sheets and blankets tangled on the bed, art supplies strewn across the rug. I vacuumed it once, and lay her mail on her desk by the window when it comes.

We text and have talked a couple of times. Little by little, I’m seeing images of her new life there, and building images of my new life here.

Eleven years after her father moved out, and the kids began living with him half time, the summer my daughter barely lived at home, a new beau moved in. After years of being the one to care for the house, with help from three different partners who lived elsewhere, and my kids, I’ve got a partner to share home, meals, finances, care for the house, daily living, and an image of the future. The good and bad of living full time with a partner again has reached my doors.

More than I expected when JT moved in as the Corona Virus struck, I sometimes find sharing home overwhelming. More than in other times, it’s a full time thing. We are both home all the time! JT works from home and I work downstairs in the day care. He brings me lattes after lunch, first iced, and this week, for the first time, hot. We make and share dinner, watch television, talk about books and family and friends, have the kids for dinner every week or two, first my daughter and son and his partner, then when my daughter left, my son and his spouse and her sister, soon the son and daughter in law again, as her sister returns to Florida next week.

Every so often we socialize with other people, sometimes with friends of his in person or online, sometimes the with Somerville Worship Group over Zoom, sometimes with the housemates in Ashfield for brief interactions as they arrive and we leave, as there are no more shared weekends in the country. A couple of times we’ve seen my sister and my mom, and a couple of times we’ve talked to his sister over Zoom. Otherwise, much of our time together is just us two, here in the now empty nest, figuring out how to be a couple in Corona Virus Times.

We take walks and talk. We sort out chores and expenses and have begun to put money in a shared money market to cover the ongoing expenses of maintaining the home, our home.

We are learning to be together and apart, to be angry and regroup, to maintain our individuality and to build up common ground, to find shared interests, to go on some small adventures, and to settle in at home, sometimes in our own spaces and sometimes right up close.

Sometimes it feels quite natural. Other times, I realize how much change we’ve been through in a short time. We met just over a year ago. JT moved in March, when quarantining began. Six months into our relationship, it was share one space or figure out the boundaries of going back and forth between my place with my daughter back from boarding school and his housemates going out to work and to be with a partner. By May he gave up his lease. In June my daughter moved to Western Mass, then in July to her dad’s, only to return to my house the week before she left in August.

Six weeks have passed since I helped my daughter set up her single room in Ohio and headed home, stopping on the way there and back to visit my mom, to stare out from her front porch to the field across the road, to look up at the bright stars and moon in the country dark sky, to soak in the sights and smells and sounds and sense of my childhood home.

Since the day care reopened in July, I’ve spent most of my days outdoors, much of it on the day care porch and in the yard, places I’ve spent a lot less time in the past. It’s as if I’ve moved out a bit, too, figuring out how to care for children in the out of doors, how to keep a tiny yard interesting enough for ten little people and two adults each day, how to bring things in and take them out again according to the weather, how to share space again after nearly four months of near solitude during the day care shutdown from mid-March to early July.

As the weather cools down, there is more to figure out. The anticipation of more loss of connection is with me as I imagine outdoor socializing will become more difficult. The yard and porch will become less hospitable, and sharing space indoors without fans and open windows feels uncertain. Shared holidays and other fall and winter traditions feel iffy.

I thought today of the missed chance to see my daughter before Thanksgiving, as she has no breaks and traveling to see her on a plane isn’t wise or feasible given my work obligations. I wonder when I’ll see my oldest child again, living his life in Brooklyn, in a new place with friends, working from home, applying to grad school. Will he come home for the holidays? Will I be ready to make a trip to NY any time soon? Will we be ready to visit our favorite museums? Will I meet his friends?

What I find is that I’m tired. My back has been giving me trouble. My days are long. I’m working five days and parts of many evenings and weekends and still finding it hard to keep up. After work I want to lie down and rest. Weekends I need to do all the catching up, the laundry, the shopping and errands, the time with my kids and sweetheart, the trips to Western Mass, and soon one to Maine, the knitting together of a shared life, the re-visioning of home with no children living here, the alone time I get so little of during the week, the socializing when we can, sometimes on my own, sometimes with JT.

We are all working this out as we go, how to live a good life in Corona Virus Times, to find joy and meaning, to understand and be part of the larger world, even when it’s hard.

Today I feel sad. Maybe it’s Trump and all those around him with Corona Virus. Maybe it’s the adjustment to new ways of living. Maybe it’s missing my daughter, or my son, or wanting living with my beau to be more seamless. Maybe its my back, or work, and the conflicts that peppered the week between parents and among the children. We are living in a soup of tension.

The young ones have begun remote school. Three kindergartners are with us on Fridays. This week I asked them how kindergarten was going so far. Great! said one. The kids are getting to know me!

Then she shifted, and let us know she hadn’t made a friend yet. The other two said they had. I wondered how they had made friends on the Zoom screen. Turns out they hadn’t. One met his friend when they crossed paths at school, picking up their kindergarten backpacks and supplies. The other had met up with a classmate at a park. This is the world we are living in, with five year olds learning how to do what is most important to many of them about school, make a friend, while dealing with the realities of Zoom school. No wonder they were cranky with each other, with the older sibling and the younger friend. No wonder the parents tension is spilling over onto the sidewalk out front.

All of this takes energy and an endless reserve of optimism in the face of gloom and doom. Finally this week, after weeks of being too worn out to drum, I returned to the Stone of Hope. Drumming was wonderful, as usual. My back pain subsided while we drummed and talked and sang. Before we left, our teacher reminded us to ground ourselves in gratitude, to be stewards of what we are given, in order to move from that place into the hard work of joining the larger world, of facing suffering and pain.

I am grateful for a whole lot, for a partner who loves and cares for me, for three fine children with whom I am building adult relationships, for work I love, for dedicated, smart, and loving caregivers, and wonderful children to share my days, for family and friends who sustain me from nearby and far away, for my shared homes in the city and the country, for good medical care to help me sort out pain I’ve been living with too long, for financial security in insecure times, for sunshine and warm breezes and big and little people who love the out of doors and remind me how to revel in it, for books and movies and shows and music to carry me away, for good food and three square meals a day, and for clothes that make me happy and keep me comfortable all year round, and for a faith community that has become another home, even if for now, the home is partly over the internet and partly in person in a park.

Wish me the best in staying grounded in gratitude, in learning to be a good steward and good partner, in finding ways to remain connected to my children, friends, and family in Corona Virus Times, and in keeping all the emotions close enough to understand them, and fluid enough I don’t get stuck in the fear and worry that surrounds us all these days.

I wish all of you the best as well. While I know there aren’t as many readers here as there were at one time, and that I write much less than I once did, I’ve found solace here a long, long time, and hope what I write can sometimes resonate when a reader needs a shared connection or a story or a window into another life. Bonne Soiree!

 

The bats are out, the moon’s a sliver, my baby leaves home in the morning

This evening I’m on the front porch, watching the sun go down. My baby is out “making the most of her last day at home,” with a friend, doing their thing. That has been her summer, “making the most of her last summer before college,” out and about with a friend or two or more, doing her thing.

Mine has been here at home, with trips to Western Mass to break up the city living. I’ve been reopening the day care in “Corona Virus Times,” the term the young ones use to describe the altered universe we’ve entered. Like my daughter, we’ve been making the most of our summer, living outside as much as we can, picking berries and tomatoes as they ripen, just today tasting the fennel gone to seed and the mint gone to flowers.

The Subaru is beside me, down below the porch in the gravel drive, loaded with a new roof rack and the old Yakima carrier, stuffed to the gills with my daughter’s belongings. If she returns early from Ohio, there will be shenanigans to get the gear back home, never mind the gal.

She’s a comfort kid, surrounding herself with beloved objects, wrapped always in style. The car is full of thrift store and Depop finds, things she’s collected at antique marts, yard sales, gathered from friends and family and the ever giving curb. Some came from my closet, from our home, some from her dad’s. She’s packed lots of artful choices, postcards from Museums around the world, treasures from childhood through young adulthood, as well as a few purely functional things, the electric kettle, kleenex, ibuprofen, and thermometer one needs for college in Corona Virus Times.

Across town my middle kid is newly married, justice of the peace affair last weekend, 8 person dinner celebration on the back porch Wednesday evening, big wedding and reception planned, postponed, and hoped to happen down the road, when family from far away can join.

The oldest has just moved to Brooklyn. At last he is one of the young adults in Hiptown, after two years on the Upper East Side and one in Harlem. He’s making his home with frisbee friends, working remotely for the foreseeable future, living his version of Corona Virus Times.

My guy is upstairs, having a quiet evening after a full day.

This is my time to feel my feelings, which I learn daily from day care kids, is not negotiable. There’s no need to push them aside or pretend they are something else.

It’s a lot for a mom to take in, the marriage of one kid one weekend, taking the youngest to college far from home the next. Only two weekends ago we finally celebrated her high school graduation. Finding her way through four schools in four towns over 14 years, my kid got herself ready for college, at Oberlin. We are all proud.

My baby’s 19. She’s ready. I’m ready. She’s one of the lucky ones who has the option to live in a dorm and take in person classes, even if there are plenty of ways the experience will be weird.

Still, last night I couldn’t sleep. As I lay awake past midnight, I remembered my first year at Cornell, at 17, missing home at first, home for Fall Break, welcoming my family for Parents’ weekend, settling in, then taking a job in another state for summer. My gal won’t be home until Thanksgiving, assuming things go as planned. We have no idea where things will go from there.

This morning when I woke early, I remembered taking my first born to college at 17, his younger sister and brother along for the ride and to help with moving in, my gal at 11 looking out the window and crying in the back of the minivan as we left her brother there. We returned for Parents Weekend to see where our guy lived and breathed while we were apart, took some lovely photos, and headed home, all in one day.

My Facebook background marks that day, the beginning of the shift to adulthood for my kids. Three kids all under my roof shifted to two that fall, then one two years later when the middle kid left for Emerson, then mostly over the last three years as my gal has been in boarding school, home only on some weekends and vacations, and not living her much since school got out. Soon there will be none at all.

A mama grows up, too. I’ve been a single mom eleven years. My baby was eight, her brothers 12 and 14, when we started living apart part time, when their dad and I split up. I don’t know if the shifting back and forth from dad’s to mom’s, then from boarding school to dad’s to mom’s, ever got easier, though I did get used to it. Now I think I’m ready for my gal to be in her single room at Oberlin, to have just one place each semester to lay her head, to store her clothes and display her treasures, to keep house. I think she’s ready, too. I’ll miss her, but we’re ready.

My oldest felt a lot of relief in that transition to making his own space. He still does well making his own life and routine. My daughter will, too, while the middle kid is making a wonderful home with his spouse, and now her younger sister.

I haven’t thought much beyond dropping my gal off in Ohio and heading home. We’ll be on the road in the am, probably early, since the car is mostly packed, maybe later, if my gal’s last day in Boston goes late into the night. We’ll drive together, listen to music on the unreliable Bluetooth, enjoy our Mama and Me playlist for one more long drive, stop at my mom’s for the night, and continue on to Ohio the following morning.

There will be testing and quarantining. There won’t be help unloading the overstuffed car into the empty room. There will be no gathering for the President’s send off and dinner, like there was when my first went off to college. Instead, I’ll help my gal move into her room after she gets tested. Then she’ll begin her quarantine, and I’ll get back on the road to my mom’s, where I’ll spend the evening, then head home again on Monday.

I expect I’ll need the long drive home to put myself together. I cry well to music on the open road, feel my feelings in important ways behind the wheel. I don’t know what my daughter will be feeling. Lots of things, I imagine, though I don’t expect I’ll hear much about them. 19 turns out to be a very independent age for my gal.

Wish us luck in Corona Virus Times. May her room be artful. May her outfits be fabulous. May she love Oberlin and make close friends. May she remember home. May she return in happiness at Thanksgiving, even if just for dinner, as she has warned. May I learn to be a mama of an even quieter house, to love my children consistently and well, from near or far. May I also spread my wings. May I be open to what comes.

The sun has set. The moon has shifted. The bats have moved on. The crickets are settling and singing. None of us are alone. Few of us stay still.

 

WFDC in “Corona Virus Times”

Turns out day care at WFDC in “Corona Virus Times” is pretty great. This is our fourth week of care, and so far, we’ve heard things from the kids who have come back like: Week one: I missed you SO MUCH!, Week Two: It’s only day two of our two weeks back and it’s already Perfect!, Week Three: It’s almost like Covid-19 doesn’t exist!

All this comes with masks, daily health screenings, extra hand washing, hand sanitizer, saying good-bye and hello to families at the gate, sitting further apart at meals, giving our friends space, and learning to interact with some care when we encounter folks outside our group in the community.

It also comes with being outside all morning and much of the afternoon, eating all our meals and snacks in the yard, a doll house and building toys and puzzles and painting easels outside, a lot of ripe mulberries, raspberries, and now cherry tomatoes to eat from the garden, mixed ages, and visits with old friends who haven’t been here for a long time, an extra room inside for older kids during rest time, a new swing and trapeze, trucks in the sand box, bubbles and art kits and yumboxes and breakfast boxes and “travel cups” for each kid, well-packed backpacks and water bottles from home that stay in the yard during the day and travel to the park with us, mask bags for storing masks when we are eating, resting, or playing in water, hardly any transitions or clean up, so much fresh air and time in nature with the plants, birds, bugs, butterflies, squirrels, chipmunks, worms, and other folks in the neighborhood parks we frequent.

As kids have been returning this summer and it’s become clear that many schools will not be in person full time this fall, we’ve also been talking with families about care for their school age children, some who have been with us as home schoolers, some who have been with us as after school friends, some who hoped to be when they went off to kindergarten, and some who have been with us this summer and whose parents can imagine our program being a good place for them to spend some time when they are not in school this coming year.

Kids and families wonder what things will look like over time. Izzy and I have been wondering, too. We love being outdoors and packing meals ahead. We’ve enjoyed the mix of ages and look forward to welcoming a new three year old this week. For years I’ve imagined a Forest Kindergarten type program. Before that I imagined an alternative to school for school age kids. Combining those two dreams feels promising this year.

A week or so ago my former family day care colleague and good friend Macky sent me an article from the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-schools-reopening-outdoors.html exploring the idea of outdoor schools or indoor schools with open windows to take up the challenge of how to have school during the pandemic. During the Spanish Flu Epidemic many such programs were created and kids and teachers stayed healthy. Kids wore warm woolen clothing and kept warm in cozy sacks on cots. The images weren’t exactly what I imagine, as we don’t intend to run a program with kids in rows learning to read and write and do math with us. But the idea of staying healthy by being outdoors and allowing fresh air to circulate inside even when it’s cold feels intriguing.

Before reopening, my friend Sue Randall and I imagined leaving our windows open when it gets cold and we need to be inside part of the day, and having everyone dress warmly, as well as being outside as much as we could. That feels possible, though in the coldest winter months we might find it too much.

We will have fans, and open doors and windows as much as we can, spend much of our days outside year round, spread out at meals and other times, have five inside rooms, a covered porch, a fenced yard, and local parks for our ten kids (maybe fewer some days, to give Izzy and I a less than exhausting schedule). We’ve been using masks and all our kids three and up are able to manage them, and our twos are learning. We wash hands a lot, and use hand sanitizer before and after park time. We clean the bathroom regularly and leave the fans on continuously. We sanitize surfaces and have individual breakfast and lunch boxes and cups we sanitize in the dishwasher after each use. It feels like we are going to be able to do this as safely as anyone can.

What would it look like to have a group of kids from an older toddler through age nine? How would the children spend their days? Recently someone asked me how we keep children of such a wide age range busy.

That is not our problem! The kids are as busy and as happy as can be. We offer materials that suit a wide range of ages, and kids make up games, read and listen to and tell stories, draw, write, think about fairness and caring, look after one another and our space, have interesting questions and observations and conversations with one another and with Izzy and me, find ways to be cozy, engaged, and active when they need to be. There are so many materials we don’t even have out, should a child be interested in using them, including a ton of legos and other building materials, circuit sets, books and tapes and music for kids of all ages, art materials, games and puzzles, science and math materials.

At WFDC and at the Sudbury Valley School where my kids attended and I worked, kids of all ages shape their days. I trust kids would do that here if we had more older kids in the mix throughout the days and weeks. It would be nice if we had more than one older child at a time, though we’ve had home schooled children for years who were out of the age range of the younger kids by a few to several years who knew what they were getting into and were quite happy.

I’m holding out hope that we can make it work. Cambridge and Somerville will announce their plans for public school in the coming weeks. We will learn over time what changes might occur in the infection rates in our area, and we’ll adapt like the rest of our community. I’m excited about the possibility of providing safe and welcoming space to our kids of all ages who want to be here, and whose families feel this is an option that works for them. I won’t be teaching lessons. I will be having conversations, helping kids find materials and space to do what they want to do, serving healthy meals and snacks, spending as much time as we can outdoors, and learning along with children and families how to maintain connection and community, and to learn and grow into our best selves during “Coronavirus Times”, as our young folks like to say.

 

Another kind of outrage

It feels hard to express my own outrage right now when so much is happening in the larger world around inequality, racial justice, and police brutality. Perhaps my outrage is in some way related, as I feel the voicelessness of family child as I sort through the new regulations offered by the EEC (Department of Early Education and Care) and guidelines created by the CDC.

Here is the e-mail I shared with families today, as I try to find a way forward.

Hello folks,

I have spent the last two days immersed in the new regulations and in trying to learn more about what will be involved in the reopening of WFDC.  Today I’m feeling angry. Yesterday I attended nearly four hours of meetings, a webinar hosted by the NAFCC (National Association of Family Child Care) and the CDC, and a Board Meeting of the EEC (Department of Early Education and Care). What I learned from the officials was quite discouraging on many levels. What I read in the chat boxes from providers confirmed how voiceless we have been in all the places where decisions are being made about how family child care fits into and will operate during this pandemic. This is not new. Most providers are low income. Many are people of color. Many are immigrants. Few have college training. We are not well organized as a group locally, regionally, or nationally to make our voices heard. 

Many years ago Macky and I worked with other providers in Boston trying to organize a voice at the legislative level, working on standards for family child care in MA, which never came into being, serving on the Board of BAEYC (Boston Association for the Education of Young Children), attending meetings all around the Boston area, being active in our local Somerville Cambridge FCC Support Group, providing trainings to other providers. Eventually, all of this came to an end for me. Much of it ended due to changes in politics, to changes in structures, to the dissipation of energy of worn out participants, to movements towards standardizing programs and top down ways of organizing and providing training for providers. 

Today I feel voiceless in speaking up when the new regulations say we may not leave the premises of our programs. Many family child care providers don’t have access to yards, and most of us in urban areas who have yards use them only as back up spaces because they are too small, because we have been prohibited from having equipment for swinging and climbing by standards we can’t meet in urban settings, because we want to be out in our communities, and because we want our children to run free.

I feel voiceless as I work and rework my budgets trying to imagine how to run a program after a months long mandated closure with inconsistent or  low enrollment, when the new regs allow family child care to have only eight children and two caregivers whereas centers and camps may have ten children and two adults with preschool and school age programs. 

I feel voiceless when I imagine wearing a mask all day in my own home, asking young children to wear masks, when I imagine sharing meals and playing and rebuilding relationships while six feet apart from one another, when I imagine greeting and screening families from six feet away in full protective gear, while also caring for a group of children. I feel voiceless when I imagine the additional paperwork and documentation and cleaning and sanitizing and expenses that will be required to earn a living and care for children in this new world. 

I feel invisible when the Commissioner of the EEC tells us that we will be supported financially through  times she predicts with fair certainty will be financially very difficult, and when the plans she presents show only providers caring for children receiving subsidies will be supported financially at this time.

I feel invisible when I try to imagine how I will maintain a program with adequate staffing when the regulations for family child care certifications are being revisited and not yet known, when we all know how hard it has been to find folks to work in family child care and get them certified in a timely fashion, when I know it will be difficult to run  a financially viable program with two caregivers and eight children or to care for six children on my own given all the additional work required during the pandemic. 

I feel invisible when I know that many of the conditions under which I will be required to operate, from wearing masks to staying on the premises, to removing most of the materials our children love (dress ups, dolls, play dough, sand and water tables, maybe wooden blocks) to attempting to socially distance in a group of young children, are conditions under which many parents will not want their children to return to our care.

Family child care programs do not have endowments or fundraising committees. Most of us don’t have much personal savings or a solid plan for retirement. We pay our own health insurance if we have it and we pay a lot. We don’t have cleaning or kitchen  or administrative staff to make any of this happen. We are on our own. 

I hate being asked to do things I don’t believe in for children. I hate the idea of taking our program apart and getting rid of materials we love and upon which the children depend for healthy regulation, growth, and development. I hate being restricted to our yard. I hate the idea of physically distancing from children in our care, of asking them to physically distance from one another. I hate the idea of wearing masks all day and of asking children to wear them in order to play together. I hate that none of us providers were invited to the table, and that restrictions are being imposed upon us that are not being imposed on others, such as being restricted to our homes. No one else in the world is being restricted to their homes. Why are we? It feels like house arrest.

I don’t think this is separate from what is happening in the larger world. I think if more family child care providers were white and privileged, we would not be trampled in this way. We would be given the opportunity to come up with plans that made the lives of children and families and caregivers central to moving forward. if we had been at the table, we would have been talking about how to meet the needs of children, about the  importance of physical touch and proximity and group play, about the necessity of sensory materials for regulation and play and creativity, about the need for time outdoors, in nature, in the community, in active play, about the importance of interaction between caregivers and families not only for health screening, but for communication about our lives and the lives of our children. We would have made the plan in an image that was realistic, financially viable, loving, and kind.

I’m writing this to you, so you know that I am angry, and that it is hard for me to move forward with more detailed visions at this moment. Without children to care for or clear guidance about how FCC will be expected to implement the new regulations in our homes, I can’t move forward with plans for re-opening.

I am asking that parents organize a meeting on Zoom in the next two weeks to discuss your thoughts about returning. I will be in Ashfield for the next two weeks, starting Saturday, where I don’t have internet access other than with my phone on a limited data plan. When I get back I’d like to organize a family meeting early in the week of June  22nd. 

If, at that meeting, I get a sense that we have enough families committed to returning this summer and this fall, I will move forward with plans for reopening. If not, I will call it quits and begin the work of finding another way to sustain my family through this time.

If we agree that there are enough families willing to commit to WFDC this summer and this fall, I will begin the work of reopening and creating new contracts for committed families to sign.  Once I have the commitments to fill at least four full time slots or the part time equivalent for summer and at least six for fall, I will begin to put together a plan and to prepare the space and caregivers to move forward. I have been told it takes three to four weeks minimum of work to reopen under the new regulations, so you may expect that to be true for WFDC.

I understand that we are all confused and overwhelmed and that so, so much is unknown. I also know that at some point, I have to make a decision about whether WFDC can reopen and remain viable during the pandemic or if I need to let the staff of WFDC move on to other work and rent the apartment the day care has been occupying.

Please know that my rage is not directed at you. As a parent, I don’t know what I would do if my children were younger, given all the uncertainty in the world and the restrictions FCC will be operating under. I do ask you to think deeply about your own needs and wishes, to listen to you heart, and to be as honest and direct with me as you are able.

Peace and Love,

Maria