It’s been one week since the masks came off at school, and a lot of kids are sick. At least one with COVID, several others with stomach bugs and hacking coughs. Our number was finally up this week, when Phoebe started complaining of a headache. Three rapid tests later, and I’m fairly confident she doesn’t have COVID, but she definitely has a nasty wet, croupy chest cold and a bad attitude toward life.
I keep telling myself, this is good for their immune systems. Two years of shelter from viruses, and they have some catching up to do. But it still sucketh, I’ll tell you what. As Tolstoy famously said, every stressed out family is stressed out about COVID in its own way (or something like that). We’re all getting a deep course in our own stressors these days, aren’t we?
Moving on. Focusing on the good.
Six years ago today, according to social media, my daughter Eliza called me “Mama” for the first time. Since then, she and her sister have gone on to hone their conversational skills pretty dramatically. Half the reason I write these posts is to chronicle some of our most absurd conversations in perpetuity.
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“Mama did you know the hot tub is bad for you but the pool is not?”
Me: “How do you know?”
Phoebe: “Because the hot tub tastes worse.”
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And when a plow driver nearly ran me down and then yelled at me for being in his way — which is how I found myself having to explain to my daughters why mom screamed at the plow driver:
“If someone treats you poorly,” I said, “you can point out that what they are doing is not okay.”
They had a lot of questions about this. What if it’s my friend? What if they’re being mean on purpose?
As usual, this eventually led us down a line of absurd questioning: “What if they are deaf and can’t hear you talking?”
“Well then, you can learn sign language or use a piece of paper to write a note.”
“What if they’re a baby and can’t read?”
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I pick them up from the bus, where they often sit with a little girl whose name, I think, is Mazie.
“We are going to Mazie’s birthday party! There are going to be fireworks!”
“Hold your horses,” I say. “I need some kind of an official invite.”
“Mazie invited us, just now, on the bus.”
“I don’t know where she lives, when the party is, or what her mom’s phone number is.”
“It’s in March, she lives on Weatherhead Hollow, and her number is 457.”
That settles it then.
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The good news is, without masks on, my hope is that my kids’ pronunciation will gain some sharp edges. First, we have to get over all the viruses we managed to evade for two years.
P.S. It turns out, masks worked!
