This is a week turned upside down. Good friends of ours just moved to freakin San Francisco. Our house is getting new floors so we decamped to “auntie’s house” (my sister in law who lives the next town over and is amazing for letting us invade her house and drink her booze). My home state of Texas is attempting to treat parents of Transgender children as “child abusers”. Russia just invaded Ukraine. And oh yeah, COVID is still a thing. I had planned to write about work ethic and my litany of jobs as a kid but I’m doing a last minute pivot to try and find the silver lining in a week as chaotic as this one has been.
I was dropping off Nora, our 3 year old, at daycare earlier this morning when I noticed the office manager lean into her phone, tilt her head down, and quietly whisper “there’s been a positive in one of the classes”. I pretended not to hear because who wants a damn eavesdropper in their midst. I’m not really a prayer guy by this was neither the time nor the place to meditate on the desired outcome of this positive case not being in Nora’s class. So I quietly said to myself “dear baby Jesus don’t let this be in Nora’s class”. I dropped her off and headed off to work.
15 minutes later the message came in: “there’s been an exposure in Nora’s class. She will need to quarantine for 5 days” (God bless the county for changing the quarantine period from 7 to 5 days just last week). I’ve honestly lost count of how many times our girls have had to come home because we either had COVID (in September / October 2021) or because of an exposure. I’m going to guess in the last 2 years it’s probably 8(ish) times they’ve each had to spend a week at home. We’ve probably lost 50-60 school days to COVID. Since we’re both working parents, this is borderline crippling. But this is a story you’ve all heard before.
The story we don’t often hear is what good fortune we have. When I got the call to pick Nora up, my first reaction was predictable. “For fuck’s sake…again?”. When I walked into her classroom her face lit up. “Why…are you back dad?” She was so happy to see me. We went back to Auntie’s house, parked ourselves on the couch, and went to work (me with meetings and dashboards and stalking the Ukraine sitch on Twitter. her with Cocomelon).
It was a moment right before I took this picture that she leaned over and gave me a hug and waived to my coworkers while we had a quick meeting that I realized how lucky we are to have had these last few years to spend so much concentrated time together. In every other generation since the Industrial Revolution, it would be incredibly rare for a dad to spend this much quality time with their children before they turn 5.
I’ve made countless PB&J sandwiches for lunch and built forts and obstacle courses in the garage. We did a 1 month road trip and then a longer, wilder 4 month roadtrip. We’ve taken our first subway ride (well, the light rail. but that still counts) and we’ve learned to ride bikes and how to swim and how to do a cannonball just right. All because of our COVID quarantine time. And perhaps most importantly, we’ve managed to go this far into the pandemic relatively unscathed.
So every time my kids get sent home from school because of an exposure or a shutdown from the pandemic, I curse it a little bit and then realize how lucky I am to get to spend the time with the girls. My job can wait a few extra days.
Positive outlook! I love it 🥰
Wisdom...!