What It Feels Like to Send Your Kids Back to School After Quarantine
There were fears and tears. Our children seemed a little scared and sad, too.
Way back in March, my kids went on spring break. This morning, a mere six months later, my wife and I took them back to school again.
The intervening quarantine has been, for all of us working parents, in all the different ways, stressful. We’ve worried about our jobs. We’ve worried about our sanity. (And those are the worries of the luckiest among us.)
But most of all, we worried about our kids.
Mine are now ages six and three. In the very early going, we attempted virtual learning with our older child. It went great, other than my daughter refusing to do the calls, or the homework. (That’s not entirely true — she did some of the first calls, but under the conditions that she would be neither seen nor heard. She would’ve done great in Victorian times.)
We wondered: Were they falling behind? What were they missing by being apart from their friends? From their teachers? From playgrounds, from swimming lessons, from camp? Would their world become impossibly small, a never-ending loop of PJ Masks and tablet time, devoid of new people, new cultures, new experiences?
My wife and I continued to work, which made both the work and the child-rearing extra-challenging. (Particularly for her, since kids cry to mommy first when they’re hurt, sad, or just need a little attention.) Of course, it would have been even harder if one or both of us lost our jobs, so we tried to focus on the positive.
And so, while it was difficult and stressful, we got by. Did we thrive? Probably not. Did we manage? Yes. Did we have an enormous amount of privilege and good fortune in doing so? Absolutely. (For starters, we have a wonderful neighborhood high school student, who watched the kids for 12–15 hours a week, a much needed respite for the two employed adults in the house.)
And so, it was the worst of times. But during small moments, it was often the best of times. We were like the Swiss Family Robinson, and the pandemic was our shipwreck. No longer beholden to a commute or work trips or “working lunches” or endless meetings about boosting engagement (or whatever), I had time for small mid-day breaks with the kids. We stared at butterflies. We built forts. (So many forts.) With the exception of quick runs to the store or quick runs to, well, run, I spent virtually every hour of the last six months in the same building with my kids. Even when I wasn’t in the same room with them, I could hear them laughing, running, crying. Both of our children are in that “Kids say the darnedest thing” period, where you would overhear the sweetest, oddest things. (My son: “I very, very love you.” Also: Poop jokes. Poop jokes for days.)
It was a blessing to bond with them and watch them grow. Even better was watching them bond with one another. They complement each other well — I often joke that my dress-loving, leadership skills-possessing daughter is the Wes Anderson to my goofy, mop-haired son’s Owen Wilson. She quite literally directs his play. It wasn’t uncommon for them to spend the morning riding their scooters back and forth in our driveway, criss-crossing with Blue Angel-level precision, their imaginations running wild as they pretended to be buses, kings and queens and knights and guards. I grew up as an only child, and I felt bad for kids in that position. My children were each other’s best (and only) friends.
But now all that has passed. Yesterday, we discovered a gash in the inflatable swimming pool that we played in all summer (on the front lawn, because we’re classy). It felt symbolic. The end of summer — which once felt as impossibly far away as world peace, or a vaccine — had arrived, almost without warning. We’re again, fortunate, in that we can afford to send our first grader to a supervised virtual learning center, and our son to a safely distanced child care center. Like so much these days, we didn’t really believe it until it was happening. As we dropped them off this morning, there were plenty of tears and fears. (And the kids seemed sad, too.)
I knew this day was coming, at least eventually. Back in May, I even wrote an essay about it. The essay never ran, but here’s how it ended:
There is something reassuring about knowing where my kids are at (almost) all times. Much of what terrifies us as parents is rooted in the fear of separation from them. We’re afraid that one day they’ll go to school and won’t come back, victims of one of the countless things a child can be a victim of. Even under the best of circumstances, we know we can’t slow their eventual drift into adulthood, and the distance that inevitably brings. We fear growing older, our own eventual demise, and the moments in our children’s lives we might miss as a result. To be quarantined with your child means never having to say goodbye.
But someday — not today, not tomorrow, probably not until late summer or beyond, barring something miraculous — I will have to tell them goodbye again. I’ll find myself hopping on a bike, making the short ride to school with my daughter, and watching from the outside as she walks away from me, leaving me once again to face the world alone. And when that day comes, having endured these long hours and days and all the big frustrations and little happinesses together, it will almost certainly feel lonelier than ever.
Today, that day came, and I’m typing this in a house that hasn’t been this silent since March. It feels lonelier than ever.
