Day Four: Still Beginning: questions about birds, bees, and coronavirus.
“What do we do now?” my eight-year old asked. “Go look at the schedule, honey.” On the beginning of the fourth day without school, my son and I started to orient ourselves to a new reality, a reality without school. “The schedule says, Fresh Air. What are we going to do? How do we get fresh air?” “Yes, fresh air. Do you want a short bike ride, a medium bike ride, or a long bike ride?” Options were always essential. “A medium one to the place with donuts and books.” Fine. It was a wise choice: movement and sunshine could buoy us for the hours to come, hours that we had to fill with instruction. An intimidating thought, given that he was taught to the incomprehensible calculations of “new math,” slicing numbers by digits and never carrying the one, or given that he was parsing literature on worksheets with categories like Role, Audience, Format and Topic. What on earth was the logic to that order, I wondered. “Continuity of learning,” the school website’s phrase, was not going to be easy. What if I wanted to show him things my way?
As good Generation X parents, we had downloaded the sample COVID-19 daily schedule, created by some generous soul well-versed in homeschooling. We reviewed it with both children the evening beforehand, and gained the approval of both children. Or, I should say, the teenager begrudged us, writing SLEEP over the early morning hours, ERG over the late morning hours, and letting us keep one hour of actual learning on the calendar. Not our younger child. He loved it. It answered questions. He taped it to the head of his bed. The next four weeks would be easy this way, I thought. All the hours had been decided already: fresh air time, academic time, creative time, lunch time, quiet time, and repeat, all the way to dinner. Children who “don’t fight” get a later bedtime, later by one hour. Considering he was already a well-behaved child, without siblings close in age, this was an easy victory.
As we set out on our bikes, I was slowly reminded of what truly awaited me during the weeks ahead: questions. “What do your students call you? Should I call you that, too?” “They call me professor. But no, just call me mom, honey.” “Does this mean that my teacher is now your boss? Did she get a promotion?” “No, honey, but she deserves one.”
“Which way is that place that I’ve been to with dad? Where are the donuts and the library?” he asked. “They probably aren’t going to have donuts this week. I don’t think they’re considered essential food items.” He followed as I gently barked out directions: onto the sidewalk, away from the pedestrians, wait for the light to turn green. Useless directions, because we were the only ones in a 500-foot radius, except for aggressive stray food-delivery robots that made us veer to the side. “Dunkin Donuts is… OPEN!” he yelled. Interesting, I thought. I went inside, and he stayed with the bikes.
I hadn’t been in a store for days, and suddenly, I was confused. How do you order food now? Has it changed? And why weren’t the workers wearing gloves? All of these things I wondered as I tracked how many times I would have to touch a shared surface: zero. Donuts only touched with wax paper. Content for my own health, wondering about the cashier’s health, I wished her well, perhaps with too much zeal, and stuffed the box in the basket. Alex was excited.
“When you were in the store and I was watching our bikes,” he said, “someone came by wearing a white mask. Were they sick? Why aren’t we wearing masks?” “They probably wore a mask to feel better, to feel invincible,” I said. “Oh,” he said. “Like a superhero?” He smiled. “Kind of.”
We went past the robot depot, past the campus statue, and down the ramps to the far end of campus. “Where are we? Oh, yes, I know this place! It’s the pond!” Questions are sometimes followed by answers. Remember that, I thought.
The sun was so bright it seemed to take color out of the surface of the water. Water was just form. It felt good to be blinded by the sun for a moment. We both sighed. From under a small bridge came two ducks, mallards. “Look, mom! It’s ducks! Wow! What are they again? Why is he green? Which one is the male?” I gave answers. A redwing bird ate fiber from the cattails, singing in between bites with round, upturned notes. A statue of Confucius stood a few yards away.
How could anyone suffer in the world when the sun is so warm, so enveloping, I thought. That was my question, which I kept to myself. It felt safe. I would bring him there every morning, I thought, away from everything else in the world.
“Ok, remember to count how many birds are on the water. And what time it is. This is what scientists do,” I said happily. “Mom, wasn’t this supposed to be a math lesson? I guess it’s kind of like that, since I’m counting.” He was right. I had already forgotten the schedule. “Let’s say it’s both, ok?” “Ok. But what will I do after lunch during my second academic hour?” “How about Spanish?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I realized that the ducks were giving us more of a science lesson than I had planned for. “What are they doing?” he asked. “Um, I think they’re mating.” I waited for more questions. None came. He squinted his eyes, and said, “Mom, didn’t the coronavirus come from ducks?” “Yeah, that’s one of the theories.” “What about the bats? Weren’t bats involved? Did a duck eat a bat?” “No, honey. I’m not sure if that’s even possible. We’ll check online later to see what the scientists say about it.”
Suddenly, out of the cattails, a horizontal line jutted out. “Alex! It’s the crane! The crane that always here at the pond! It’s right next to us!” And we stood hushed, hugged together tightly, staring at the crane catch a fish. “Let’s see him from the other side!” he whispered. And as he ran around, the crane took flight, holding a reed in one foot. “Did you see how long his legs are? Why are his legs orange?”
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