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.