Vol. 11 - Adapt and Change
Kids are adaptable creatures. That doesn't mean they're immune to change.
Writing this very newsletter was a bit Herculean for me.
Normally, or at least over the ten-week lifespan of this newsletter, I write on Monday morning, usually before sunrise, revise on Tuesday, and give one final look over on Wednesday before clicking the little purple icon at the bottom of my screen that says “Publish.”
But this week, getting to my desk has bordered on the impossible. And when I have gotten there, my brain wants to do anything but write.
Because, as so many other writers, I have a preferred routine, one that, after hundreds of thousands of words, I’ve determined work best for me.
And what works best for me is getting to my desk within a few minutes of waking and writing for as long as I can before I am (happily) interrupted by my three-year-old son, who will sit in my lap for a few minutes before rushing to our living room to play, leaving me back to my business.
That’s not to say I’m useless if I can’t write before 9am (nor is it to talk about my process, because few things are worse than creatives talking about their processes) as much as it is to say that I often do my best and most fruitful work long before 9am.
In fact, before our daughter arrived, my work hours were usually 5 to 9am, with some revising and editing time in the early afternoon.
There’s so much truth to the posthumously published line of Hemingway’s, “a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon”. I think he’s was talking about killing wildebeests or something, but, as is the case with so much Hemingway, the sentiment can apply elsewhere.
But this week, this holiday stretch that has my son’s school closed until after New Year’s, has taken my preferred routine and thrown it directly into the incinerator.
More importantly, it’s done just the same for my son.
Our son has been on a rollercoaster for a year now.
Since he started school, there have been at least a few occasions where he’s had to stay at home because of a close contact or a Covid scare with at least one stretch when the entire school was closed. He’s had to quarantine from his cousins and his grandfather, his favorite people in the world, after we or they have taken trips outside of our little bubble. He’s been told that he can’t see his friends for a week or more because this kiddo or that one may have been exposed. He’s been promised mornings and afternoons at his favorite museums only to be reneged due to a spike in cases.
He’s spent most of his life in the throes of a pandemic, and though we promise him every single day that this is not how it will always be, masking, distancing, quarantining, swabbing, and precautions are almost all he’s ever known.
And he hasn’t complained once.
“Kids are adaptable!”
It’s an adage repeated ad nauseam by parents. And while there is a lot of truth to it, a major function of the idea that is often glossed over is that kids are adaptable because they have to be; because kids don’t get much of a say in their day-to-day; because most households aren’t democratic.
Kids are adaptable because if they weren’t, we’d be having dinner at Wendy’s every night and going to sleep at midnight after fifteen episodes of Adventure Time or Paw Patrol. Kids have to be adaptable because we’re the ones in charge.
What’s more truthful is that kids thrive inside of boundaries, with agendas, and through routine.
And though Emily and I have worked so hard to give our son as much of a routine as is possible throughout a global pandemic, there have still been myriad moments when that routine is tossed by the wayside and we, his parents, are left to scramble, to figure out what the hell to do in order to keep our son occupied and thriving until we can once again resume that routine.
We had this entire holiday week mapped out in advance. There were plans almost every day to visit different children’s museums in Raleigh, Durham, Graham, and Winston-Salem. We were going to take our son on his first train ride; a simple Amtrak jaunt from Durham to Greensboro and back. We were going to watch the Carolina Tar Heels play in a bowl game named for mayonnaise in Charlotte.
But the recent surge in Covid cases has thrown that out the window, leaving Emily and me to scramble as we did in the earliest days of the pandemic, taking our son for bike ride after bike ride, and spending endless hours in the woods behind our home.
As the Omicron variant spreads like wildfire, Emily and I have had some very real conversations about what we plan to do once our son’s preschool opens back up after the New Year.
He is under five and unable to be vaccinated, therefore his only protection is a mask and good judgement.
Do we, after two-and-a-half weeks stuck at home with his parents, keep him out of school for another week (or more) until this thing dies down a bit? Or do we send him back, fingers crossed that everything will be as okay as it can be?
What’s the right move? We have no idea.
Because another week stuck at home means a complete deviance from our routine. It means that Emily and I will be almost completely unable to work and make our livings. But more important, it means that our son will have another week, the first of a year that was supposed to be better, away from his friends, from his school, from the routine that he has come to love so much.
But in the end, he’ll be fine. Because kids are adaptable. Far more so than their parents.
Your last sentence uses the best punctuation! He’ll be fine… he’ll be adaptable…. And he will only remember whether or not you were overly anxious or predictably more loving!!! Stay at it!