Countdown to a Covid School Year

I'm up because he is, six hours before the pandemic's new school year starts. 

"Can I have melatonin?" he asked, when caught with all the lights on, no evidence of Minecraft or YouTube or Fortnite or any scramble to conceal activity. 

He said he couldn't sleep without the cat. 

"No. It's too late for melatonin," I told him. "And why didn't you just go find her?"

"I don't know."

"Go to sleep. Seriously. Now."

Yesterday, we had a virtual conference with this advisor. He participated from the other room, yelling occasionally to dispute my side of the conversation -- that distance learning last spring had been fine!, that he DOESN'T HAVE! a greatest strength, and to PLEASE STOP!!! talking about him. 

Eventually, he retreated to his room. "Goodbye, Dylan!" she yelled when our time was up.

"Oh, he's not there, anymore," I told her. I thought it had been obvious when the interruptions had subsided. "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm unflappable."

A newspaper friend once called me "unflappable," and I consider it one of the biggest compliments ever paid me. It's also true -- being steady and unbothered by most things is how I thrived in a deadline-driven career at the time, and how I've survived my motherhood years so far. I feel hopeful about this teacher (whose Zoom password is Tacos, so, really, I should already have known she's good people).

So if -- oh, let's just be honest -- when Dylan misses the bus in the morning, may she be unflappable. And may she have a big stash chips and salsa just off camera. 

Of Mess and Missing

Not being much into matchy-matchy home decor, I rely on books and LEGO and the kids' pottery and paintings to decorate our house.

Once, there was some deliberateness to the shelves -- board books here, off-limits stuff up high, paperbacks in this room, sports titles in the office, hardbacks there, small books on this skinny shelf, heavy ones in a stack on the bottom. But at some point, like most things around here, they got mixed together, and the randomness of the sizes, shapes and colors looked almost purposeful.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I set out to make the mess useful, and read the titles I haven't read, especially the ones the boys were assigned in school. I had neglected an earlier project, started a year ago, to read everything Blake read in eighth grade, in an attempt to create common ground. I hadn't kept up, and he'd not appreciated the effort, anyway.

The time in isolation afforded a chance to restart, I thought, and reading was up there with baking and Zoom workouts in those early lockdown days. Remember?

"You should start with 'The Crucible,'" Blake had said. "You deserve that one."

So I started with "The Crucible." And then I read or listened to many others: "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Fahrenheit 451," "Fish in a Tree," some of "The Great Gatsby," "Silver Linings," "Jaclyn Hyde," "Look Both Ways," "The Hate U Give," "Educated," "Untamed," "This Book is Anti-Racist," "The Worst Hard Time," "Little Fires Everywhere," and "The Breadwinner."

On Thursday, five days before remote learning is to start, the school sent the list of books we need to buy. I noticed the email, and then forgot it, until today. The order in which the books will be read is not clear, so I was hopeful when I saw "The Breadwinner" on the list.

"Oh, good. Maybe 'The Breadwinner' is first," I thought. "That would at least buy us some time to get the others ordered and delivered."

I had enjoyed "The Breadwinner," a story about an Afghan girl in a Taliban-controlled state, enough to take a photo of the cover and send it to my niece.

"You might like this one," I texted her, probably last May or maybe March.

That photo is now the only evidence that the book ever existed at Shady Brook Lane. Because it is lost. Gone. Shoved somewhere, likely, on the bright and scattered shelves of the family room or hallway, or hiding on Dylan's headboard, or stashed in an end table or stacked on a bedside table, or, or, or....

On this Day Whatever of This Covid Life, purchasing school books would have felt like an accomplishment, but now I've spent so much time looking for a book I surely will find once I reorder it, that maybe I'd be better off starting some sourdough or dumping a new jigsaw puzzle onto the dining room table and hunting again tomorrow.

Ohs and effs

This is not a story about a dog's haircut, but it starts that way.

The scene: A strip mall pet grooming salon. Mid afternoon, a few hours before the city's mask ordinance goes into effect.

I carried Peanut from the car toward the grooming salon because the pavement was hot and, somehow, she knew where we were. My keys, heavy with the attached minibar-sized bottle of hand sanitizer, were shoved in my pocket and making my pants fall down.

Half-way between the car and the salon door, I realized I left my face mask in the front seat.
"Effity, eff, eff!" I thought to myself. And then, "Oh eff it. This will take two minutes." (I didn't really say "effity" or "eff," but I'm trying to keep this family-friendly.)

The groomer fawned over Peanut. I completed the paperwork and handed over the leash.

"Pickup at 4 o'clock, right?" I asked.

"Yes, but we might be done sooner," she said.

"Oh, OK. Text me if you are. I'm a swim coach, and I'm headed to the pool now. With these clouds I won't be surprised if we get lightning. If we do, I can get her before 4."

"Oh! At least you get to swim! So many things are closed."

"Yes. I hope it lasts."

"Well, I can tell you this: I am NOT going along with that mask mandate. I've already called the police, and they say they can't enforce it. I have done my research! It's a $50 ticket, but they can't make anyone pay it. There's no penal code for it!"

"Oh."

"And I'll tell you what! I am NOT spending one dime in Sarasota until that thing is lifted. And I am NOT going to Costco EVER AGAIN. Mandatory masks there!"

"Oh."

"And what do you think is going to happen when they have this vaccine?"

"Huh?"

"Are they going to make people get it?"

"Oh. Well. I'm not sure what the plan is. But they make kids get vaccines for school, so I assume something like that will be done."

"Well, not my kids! My son was sliding towards autism before he was a year old. I put a stop to that!"

She went there.

Out.of.bounds.

----

A few things I should have done:

1) Taken my dog and ran.
2) Worn my effing mask in the first place.
3) Said way more than, "Oh."

But the poor pup had quarantine claws, and I had to get to the pool, and I was just so stunned to be included in this conversation in the first place. I was too slow and stupid to do or say the right thing.

I called my mother on the way to the pool.

"I'll pick her up, and I'll wear my mask!" she said.

"No, you stay home," I told her. "But I'll wear mine when I pick up. That will be beautiful."

"No," she said. "You're liable to be shot!"

She went there.

She's not out of bounds. This is effing Florida.

I picked up the dog at 3:40 p.m. I did not wear my mask.

I did not tip.

Happy Mother's Day, the pandemic edition

There's an enduring Caldwell family memory from 1987, the year we moved to California.

We lived in Bakersfield. "It's centrally located!" my father would say, perhaps trying to sell it to himself as much as to us. And as it was so convenient, the Caldwells would spend weekend days in the Toyota minivan, getting to know our new home.

We could drive to L.A. or the Central Coast in 90 minutes, sometimes less. It was five hours to San Francisco or the U.S.-Mexico border.

Totally doable, in my dad's mind, was to be in the Bay Area for brunch, walk around until dinnertime, and be home by late bedtime. Sometimes, we'd do it again the next morning. Or maybe I'm making that up. It's been awhile ... but that seems likely.

On a trip to San Diego one day, Patrick, Kimberly and I fought the entire way. My father blasted Zig Ziglar on the cassette deck, turning up the volume when we whined or asked how much longer or yelled about someone touching us. My mother waved and whacked her wooden spoon, only ever smacking the Good News Bible she'd stolen from St. Bartholomew's in Corpus Christi, Texas, and which would grace the back seat of the van until it finally was pushed to the junk yard near Fresno nearly 200,000 miles later.

There is a photo from that San Diego trek of us three children in a Balboa Park parking lot. We'd just arrived and are standing outside of the maroon van, all with our arms crossed across our bodies, all scowling. I am wearing a yellow shirt. My sister's hair is baby-white. My brother sneers.

Here's the part now sweet with 30-plus years of perspective: Seconds after that moment was preserved on film, my parents told us to get back in the van, and we drove home, through San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, over the Grapevine and into the driveway on Kennedy Avenue.

We never set foot in the World Famous San Diego Zoo. And we never forgot it. My folks tamed savageness with savageness and won.

Much respect, Mom and Dad.

I tried to re-create the photo in the zoo parking lot when Blake and Dylan and I were in San Diego in February. Just that little project to try to make Nana and Baba laugh was such a cluster of foolishness that I, too, almost packed up and drove away (in my fantasy, though, I left the children behind).

Yes, today is Mother's Day, and the truth is that the savages are winning most days around here.

But I'm so grateful for that trip to a water polo tourney across the country at the end of February. We landed home just days into a new world and a different and much more difficult time. It's hard to know when we or any other family will get another chance to create bad yet treasured memories, so I'm glad we got our shot.

Happy Mother's Day from these savages.

Be like Rachel

From March 28, 2019....

While the Great Sock War of 2011-14 is mostly over, with only pop-up skirmishes every few days or so, picking out new shoes remains among the surest ways to bring on full-scale battle.
Just as I was to wave the white flag tonight in Dick’s Sporting Goods, and buy the way-too-big-size-7s, anyway, Rachel in Shoes said, “I can help, I think. My sister is 13, and she’s the same way.”
She explained how she went to Footwear University—for a whole week! And she knows some special ways to tie shoes that might make them feel not-so-tight.
She brought out 6s, 7s, and 6.5s, Under Armor, Saucony and Asics. She laced and relaced, tied and tied again. She went to and from the back with armloads of boxes, empathetic and unflappable. Only once did D question her credentials.
“So if I go to Architecture University for only a week, will I be an ‘expert’ in architecture?”
“Architecture school takes longer than a week. Footwear school is only a week long.”
“No, she said she went for a week, not that it lasted a week. She maybe is a Footwear University dropout. We don’t know.”
“Fine. Ask her when she comes back if she dropped out or graduated.”
Except he didn’t. He tried on the next pair, and he let her adjust them, and he agreed that they were a good fit.
And we left the store with new shoes on his feet and almost a smile on his face.
Her manager said he knows how good she is, but he was glad I told him.
Here’s to all the siblings of kids “the same way.” They don’t have it easy, but may they all turn out like Rachel in Shoes.

Do Not Wake

He called himself a "swimmer"!

"I cannot walk even one more step," he said from the back seat.
"Go get your homework," I said.
"But I cannot walk. At all. We had to do the mile run in PE, and I cannot walk anymore."
"Go to your locker. Get your homework. We are holding up car line, and people are going to get mad at us again."
"And the PE teacher says I have to do the mile again on Monday. He said he's never had anyone go more more 13 minutes before."
"13 minutes?"
"Yeah, but I was under 13. My time was 12:58, and he STILL says I have to do it again."
"Did you walk?"
"Well, duh. I told him I'm a swimmer, not a runner."
"Oh, well! Let's just go swim a mile, and then I'll tell him you're good to go."
"How about we don't, but tell him we did?"
"How about you just go get your homework out of your locker?"
"OK. But my legs are literally going to fall off."
"Well, then you probably won't have to run that mile again."
"I'll go get my stuff."

Once upon a time, he was a swimmer.

It was worth it

When you bring the forgotten backpack to the front office of school, and the receptionist, who you're just getting to know, puts her hands to heart and tilts her head a little, and says, "Oh my goodness. He's just the best," it makes the trip to drop off the forgotten backpack, despite the hassle and the traffic and the how-did-you-walk-right-past-it-ness, totally worth it.

We're not the only ones

From Nov. 19, 2019 ...

I missed the bus this morning with some other mother’s kid, a seventh-grader who lives on the cul-de-sac behind us, who Peanut and I see most mornings when out for our walk. He’s small, and sweet, which is a very Southern description and not one I usually use, but he is, in such a way that I’ve never mentioned he should come over and play because my children would eat him alive. 
Today, he was several steps ahead of us and in a hurry, and I didn’t say “Good morning,” because I knew why he was rushing. He was about to miss the bus. But Peanut wanted to catch up, not understanding that her friend might be in a little trouble, and so we trotted close enough that when I stepped on an acorn, he heard it and turned.
“I think I’m going to miss the bus,” he said.
“I think you’re going to, too. We don’t want to slow you down.”
“OK! I’ll talk to you tomorrow!” he said, and he hurried on.
Seconds later, we both saw the bus pull up to the distant corner, and he turned around again, shrugging.
“Guess I missed it,” he said.
“Don’t you think if you run, they’ll see you and wait?”
“Maybe. Bye!”
And he ran a few steps, but the bus pulled away without noticing him.
“Oh, well,” he said. “Now, at least, I can stop and pet Peanut.”
So he did, and then he went to tell his mother, I suppose, that he needed a ride to school.
And I stood there with the dog, thinking how different some people’s lives must be, yet, still, so very similar.
And then Peanut and I walked home to start dragging the boys of Shady Brook Lane out of bed.

Once upon a time, the Neumann kids were at the bus stop on time.