The View from the Hermitage, Day 349

I read this morning that child mental health is a growing concern in Germany. One in three kids is suffering from pandemic-related anxiety or depression or is exhibiting psychosomatic symptoms such as headaches or stomach aches. Reading that took me back thirty years to when Son #1 was three and in preschool. The preceding summer of 1990 had seen Iraq under Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait. Early in 1991, what had begun in August as Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm with the start of offensive action by the US and allies. 

We have always let our kids watch, listen to, or read news reports. Even at the age of three, Son #1 knew that one country had invaded another country and our country was helping to defend the invaded country and, as Desert Storm began, to fight back to kick the invading country out. Several other parents took issue with the fact Son #1 had been briefing the other kids on troop movements, drawing a diagram to show them a flanking movement. No other kids even knew a "war" albeit a minor one was happening.

I wonder, even with the 20/20 hindsight, how we might have explained the pandemic to a three-year-old Son #1. The Professor said he had no idea, so I asked Son #1 what he thought about how to explain the pandemic to a three-year-old. He said that kids that young did have experience with illness. "You can't go to preschool today; you're running a fever." "You have a cold." Some illnesses are worse than others, and there are ways to protect yourself and others from those illnesses, such as wearing masks or not hugging. (He had two Japanese kids in his kindergarten class who did wear masks to school from time to time.) 

Of course, knowing Son #1 so well, he would have also taken in such things as spike proteins and mRNA vaccines and, yeah, it's a good thing his preschool would have closed down because I would have been in such trouble with the other parents. 

Once again, I am glad my children made it to adulthood and out on their own.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 210

Thirty weeks! If you're around my age, you probably remember when we weren't supposed to trust anyone older than 30. I hope this doesn't mean I have to start not trusting each passing week. They're hard enough to believe most weeks, but I like being able to trust that they will happen, pandemic or not.

I was feeling on the blue side earlier, feeling as if I were accomplishing nothing worthwhile nor anything creatively fun. I knit or needle felt in the evening while the husband does crossword puzzles or sudokus with the television on for background noise, but I don't want to head down to use the sewing or felting machine given that it's the one time the husband and I can sit together other than dinner. I forget sometimes that I do have a house to put back together which is why I'm not engaging in creative play during daytime hours. Managing to accomplish a relatively big thing this afternoon has helped me to feel better. 

Back when my desk in the basement was a desk for work, I had a standing desk accessory on it. When the husband moved home to work, I gave it to him for his home office. He was missing the one he had used at his office. He ended up deciding that the desk in his home office did not have enough extra room with the standing desk device sitting on it. It went out into the hallway where it has sat pretty much since we started putting things back after the floor job. This week, I took the time to clean off my desk so that older son could carry the standing desk device down and put it back on my desk. The HP printer I had down here was too large, so I swapped it with the smaller Epson printer I'd sent up to the husband (yes, I had two printers on one desk). 

This afternoon, after telling myself I'd feel better if I did something, I boxed up my laptop and anything else that did not need to be on the unused-for-eating side of the dining room table. Unexpectedly, I had to remove the Epson printer from the network and re-install it, which took a while. I am pleased to report that it works just fine. I just need to remember that it is installed on the wi-fi network associated with the wi-fi extender plugged into the wall just outside the door. As long as I log in to the same network, I can print just fine. Having accomplished my goal for the day, I feel much more upbeat. I had also forgotten how much I like working at a standing desk. Yes, life is good!

I kept my walk short this morning, for recovery purposes and due to the rain that was starting to pick up. At one point, the big pots of fall flowers outside several houses jumped out and hopped on my train of thought. Homey touches, just as the pumpkins on several porches were. I did, for several years, get pumpkins to put on our porch. A couple of years they were made into jack-o-lanterns that sat on the porch until they rotted. When the sons outgrew the jack-o-lantern stage, the pumpkins eventually became katana (Japanese Samurai sword) practice. I haven't gotten porch pumpkins for several years now. You can't see the porch from the road. Neither can we see the porch from inside the house. 

Every August or September, my Facebook page gets decorated with first-day-of-school photos posted by various friends. Some, posted by younger friends, are of their kids in real time. Others posted by friends of a similar age to me are throw-backs. Am I a failed parent to admit that taking such photos never even entered my mind? I did recently ask older son if he would miss having such photos as memories of his childhood. He said he'd be embarrassed if such photos existed, and I expect he was being truthful. 

Other potential family traditions came and went. The gingerbread house kits were a hit for one year. The sons competed to see who could come up with the best gingerbread house of horrors. They fashioned licorice strings into nooses, for example. Red frosting became the blood flowing out under the front door. Did they want to do this again the next year? Nope. I may eventually have thrown the kits away to keep me from eating all the candy I'd gotten for them to use.

When the sons were middle- and high-school age, I did start making homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning something of a family tradition. I am still expected to make them even if older son's "healthy eating" means he won't eat any. So I guess I haven't been a total failure on the parenting or mothering front.  At least that's what I tell myself as I eat the leftover cinnamon rolls. 

I will now go rest on my laurels for writing a post bereft (save for this) of any mention of current politics. I think I've earned it.

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 44

I've read multiple articles on kids and parents being home together all day, meshing adult work with kid school at home. The one I read last night on the CNN website, "Why some kids are happier right now, and other unexpected effects of quarantine," really hit home. After finishing it, I turned to the husband and told him I wasn't such a bad parent after all, not that I really ever thought I was.

So what's changed for kids? Forget for a moment the whole "school's out for summer" aspect of right now. There's no school, but there's also no soccer, dance or music lessons, gymnastics; in fact, there are no out-of-school activities at all to which kids have to be rushed from school to activity to home. Kids have extended down time, in some cases for the first time ever. In the case of the sons, they did several after-school activities, always of their own choosing, and typically only one at a time. In other words, no planner was needed to get from one day to the next.

One mother noted, "Now we have a chance to get stupid and take a break together." Kids can experiment and try new things, things they come up with on their own. They learn they can do things they thought that or had been told that they could not.The article notes, "Sheltering in place has lowered the stakes and expectations of everyday life, and it's giving kids a chance to take more chances." Did the sons ever get stupid together and/or take chances? Do not get me started on the stories of riding a couch down the stairs, hiding each other's doors, making armor from AOL CDs and asking the other brother to "Hit me." I thought letting them play on their own was easier than coming up with activities for them. As long as no one got hurt, things were cool.

Before anyone asks, no, the sons did not always get along. They played together better some days than others, and it wasn't until high school that each realized what kindred spirits they and the other brother were. Sometime after that, they became best friends. They continue to be very close though they have grown into different adults (they're in their early 30s now). They had a good foundation on which to build, and the things described above were a big part of that foundation.

The coronavirus pandemic is not a good thing, far from it. At the same time, it offers some bright spots tiny though they may be. People helping each other, some they know and some they don't. People singing or clapping appreciation sometimes from above. It's humbled many of us, showing us just how much we take for granted and giving us the chance to do bette as we go forward. And it has in many, many cases, let kids be kids, and that is a very,very good thing.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 19

The local paper had a report this morning about a long-term care facility in Richmond that had tested all its residents and staff for covid-19. The results were sobering. Approximately two-thirds of the tests came back positive. Perhaps more troubling, of the residents who tested positive, 58% were "asymptomatic carriers showing no signs of being ill." The administrator of the facility said the results were consistent with other mass testing studies. The virus has also been found in at least five other long-term care facilities in the greater Richmond area.

My mother is in a long-term care facility here. It is not one of the three local facilities that have reported cases, but looking at the Richmond results suggests there probably are some cases at her facility. The facility has not let family or non-medical people visit for several weeks. The residents no longer eat together in the dining room. There are no organized activities such as chair yoga, bingo, or book club. While residents can still get together in a common area to chat, Mom says no one seems to be doing that any longer.They do take the temperature of each resident daily and ask about symptoms. If they plan on testing everyone, they haven't told the families yet.

The generations have flipped. I feel like a parent with a kid on a school trip abroad (younger son did two such trips in high school) knowing that there's nothing I can do except trust other adults to watch over and out for him. I can work to control my own little world; I just hope they're doing the same for my mother.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 11

The "Local Living" section of today's Washington Post has several columns or questions about helping kids cope with anxiety over the way things are right now. I'm not sure how the sons would have reacted had we gone through something like this when they were little. I know we would have explained it to them as truthfully as possible. We would have let them watch the news with us. We would not have censored the information.

I was something of a pariah among preschool parents in 1990 when Operation Desert Storm began. As noted above, the sons watched the nightly news with us, and we answered their questions factually. Older son took the information he had learned and was explaining troop movements to his preschool classmates, none of whom had any idea there was a mini-war going on. Some became quite anxious according to their parents, and it was my fault for letting my son know what was going on.

Children not old enough to understand the details about something mirror their parents' attitudes toward that something. They learn by doing or feeling what they see the adults they know best doing or feeling. Older son was not anxious about Operation Desert Storm because the husband and I were not anxious. We did not hide our concern from him, but it was certainly not the end of the world. I am not sure that would be the case with the current pandemic. I do know that I would have been less nervous about things then than I am now, almost 30 years later. My asthma would still have put me in a higher risk group, but I would have had a much younger age to put in the plus column. And I am less anxious now than I might otherwise be because I am following the guidance about social distance and contact. What anxiety I do feel these days is helping me take the precautions I can after which there's not much else to worry about.

Today's parents may also be handling having their kids home from school for an extended period of time, in a couple of cases for the rest of the academic year. At-home enrichment and reading may be enough for the young ones, but the teenagers in subject-matter classes are a totally different matter. Teenage me would probably be fine with learning online. My first experience with online instruction was when I was in a sixth grade math class, way back in the late 1960s. In many ways student me enjoyed online, independent learning, but I have been told that I am not normal. I hope that today's students in sequential classes are able to grasp the material that would have been taught in a classroom March through May.

The students in social studies classes such as civics, government, or history are watching a future textbook being written before their eyes. I just hope their possibly pariah parents are letting them watch or read the news.

A Mom Moment

I took younger son to the local airport this morning. I asked him if I should just drop him off or go into the terminal with him. Noting that the short-term parking lot was not too crowded, he said why not come in with him. I did, and watched him confidently present his government-issued ID and obtain his boarding passes. I accepted the hug he offered, wished him luck, and told him I'd see him on Wednesday. We shared "love yous" as I felt tears start to roll down my cheeks. "Just a Mom moment," I told him. Having seen them before, he nodded, turned, and headed for the security checkpoint. I turned for the door to the parking lot, not trusting myself to watch him walk away.

Younger son is 20 though within spitting distance of being legal to imbibe. Five months from college graduation, he's sitting comfortably on one good offer of a good job. He's flying to Seattle today, picking up a rental car, and driving to Redmond, where tomorrow he will interview with Microsoft. Tomorrow night, he will red-eye back east, for two class presentations on Wednesday. Thursday, he will apparently (details still being arranged) fly to Mountain View, California for a Friday interview with Google. He'll get home Saturday, to the break he says he's looking forward to more than he has any other.

When did my kid grow up and get so confident and self-assured? I tell myself one moment that I must have done something right along his path through childhood and adolescence and the next moment tell myself that it must have been all his father's doing. I tell myself one moment that I could never have done what he's doing and the next moment remind myself that I did do similar things at a similar age though in a different world and time. One moment I want to hold him close and never let him go or go too far away, and the next moment I can't wait to see what he accomplishes next.

Being a Mom is like that, I guess.