quality time.jpg — quality time

moments that matter

Parenting in the age of “Sheltering in Place” is, like all parenting, a game with ever changing rules and ever-changing needs. Every time I feel that parenthood has stretched my capabilities as far as they can possibly be stretched, life asks me to stretch a little bit further.

So many thoughts have been running through my mind in the last few weeks (we are now ending the 5th week of sheltering in place in NC, where I live), and that has made shaping a cohesive blog post a challenge. I’ve wondered both how to organize all these thoughts and also how I might possibly add constructively to the barrage of media confronting people at this time. Here’s where I’ve landed:

A Pandemic of Paradox

Over the last few weeks many thoughts and emotions have run through me, punctuated by some more centered, peaceful moments of meditation and yoga—but those are, truly, only moments. The harder work is the mindfulness in place, the mindfulness while parenting, the mindfulness while working, the mindfulness under the mask at the grocery store. My husband, who is our usual grocery shopper, went to four stores last weekend to find everything on our list. At the end, he was wiped out. “There’s so much more mental strain,” he said. “I’m thinking about keeping my distance from people, and not sneezing, and then there’s the emotion.” I’d gone with him to the grocery store the week before, and I knew exactly what he meant. Everyone looked exhausted and sad. I was at once so immensely thankful that the grocery store clerks were working, and also so concerned about their health and their reduced hours.

As we watch people around the world and down the street suffer with illness, death, layoffs, and financial worry, I am struck by the uncomfortable feeling that, in many ways, my life has gotten better since the pandemic. Yep, you read that right.

My family is healthy, and both my husband and I are still employed and able to work from home. So far, with minor substitutions here and there, we’ve been able to find everything we need. Every leaf in our wooded neighborhood is electric green, and my kids are electric green. At almost four and almost six, they awake each day with a total love of life. Yesterday I made leaf prints with my kids and then watched my littlest pedal a bike on his own (no training wheels!!) for the first time. The day before, I watched my oldest play the first lines of sheet music on a piano. My parents who moved down the street from us a few months ago (from out of state) were there to witness the bike riding milestone. None of these are moments I would have witnessed in a pre-pandemic work week. Since life has slowed down I’ve seen my husband, my parents, and my children more than I’ve ever been able to as an adult. We’re not rushing off to work and school and daycare in the morning. I’m not commuting hours each day. Our weekends are no longer a constant march of social commitments and chores and errands. At night I am awoken by owls instead of cars. Owls.

It is a time of paradox. For people like myself, school closures alongside working from home means a day that is packed with constant social interaction and two simultaneous jobs. Yet, right around the corner are people out of work and people isolated and alone. People are falling ill with alarming rapidity and severity while the environment seems to be rebounding.

Spring is my favorite season, but this season feels especially lovely. It also feels incredibly poignant. There will never again be a time like this, when we are all so close, when my children are so little and I am so loved by them, when my parents are so healthy and independent. Trouble is just outside and all around and I am troubled by it, especially when I venture out on necessary errands or read the news. Even in this time of life, I’m also thinking a lot about death: about where my life is headed, should I survive this pandemic, and whether I have any business unfinished; about where I’ve been, how I got here, and some of the whys; and a lot about whether I am prepared for what’s ahead. I’ve chosen to cope in the ways I know best: giving where possible, trying to keep myself and those around me healthy, relying on humor, and savoring this time for what it is.

Giving

We’re supporting a local restaurant collective that has started doing takeout food, as well as selling some farm-to-table goods. We tip as lavishly as we can. This is hard for me, as my go-to crisis management style is, apparently, a type of lock-down where no money is spent and only rice and beans are eaten. My husband is leading the charge on making dinner easier (because we don’t need three jobs) and keeping local businesses solvent. We are donating to the Public School Foundation Community Meals project, which is replacing the two meals a day that many children receive at school. We are picking up groceries for my parents—at almost eighty, they don’t need to be going to the store. We’re helping our neighbors how we can. We’re trying not to burden workers by shopping any more than we need, including at Amazon. We’re looking at other places where donations might make an impact: homeless shelters, domestic violence organizations, healthcare organizations, and research endeavors. I’m trying to be there for my students and coworkers, even if only virtually. We’re trying to find small jobs for folks in our community who are out of work or who have reduced hours. We’re saving our money and staying home, to try to limit the possibility that we’ll be a burden on others in the future. Many of these efforts seem so small as to be insignificant, but I know that they’re not. Each person who is well and working is like an ant; we each make a small contribution of time, effort, or money, and something bigger results.

Health

By far, maintaining good mental health has been the most challenging aspect of this experience. There are so many negative emotions cycling through each of us every day—fear, worry, hopelessness, boredom, frustration. Yet our emotions directly impact those of the people around us. In the intimate quarters we now inhabit the infection of despair can spread rapidly. Our small children don’t understand why Mommy must not be late for her meeting or why Dad is frustrated when they won’t eat the food on their plate, and we, as the adults, have to roll with this. For reasons I can’t explain (boredom, isolation, stress, the end of times…all of the above?), I find old memories surfacing, deep questions rising to the water line, and a need to heal the past in preparation for the future. My husband, I think, put it best yesterday when he said, “I can’t tell if I’m having a midlife crisis, or if this is just a crisis.” I have been turning to meditation a little more each day, trying merely to listen to the discomfort and whatever it has to tell me.

Our physical health is, of course, of immense importance too. I have really felt the loss of a routine (and of childcare!) in this arena. It turns out that a routine doesn’t keep me on track for work or chores—I manage to deliver on those things regardless…but, man, I don’t think I’ve ever done so many dishes in my life. The routine keeps me on track for myself. All the things are still getting done…except writing and exercise. After recognizing these omissions, though, I’ve been slowly working them back into the nooks and crannies of the schedule. To keep the mind and body right, I am: exercising when and where and how I can (yesterday it was sprinting next to my kids while they rode their bikes); meditating in the first few minutes of the morning, still lying in bed (and other times, as able); laying my yoga mat out on the bedroom floor at night and trying to make it the first thing I step on in the morning; taking vitamins and making sure my kids take theirs; wearing masks and gloves in public; making masks for others; enforcing strict hand-washing whenever we enter our house or my parents’ house; cleaning the house as I am able, but focusing on the surfaces we touch the most, and using bleach wipes intermittently, including on groceries. The harder work is keeping my stress to myself and reminding myself, when others around me are dark and down, that my positivity has to be like armor. I’m not talking aggressive cheerfulness (cause that just makes people want to kill you, and who needs a trip to the hospital right now?!), I’m talking about more of a quiet disregard for the negative. As a person who struggles with resentment and injustice, a type of mantra has helped me in this endeavor: This is a unique time. That is code for: people are allowed to mope and throw tantrums and drop the ball, this is a really difficult time. That has allowed me to stay positive when things around me aren’t so great.

Humor

A few mornings ago we bundled our sleeping children into our bed because of a tornado warning (because, you know, a global pandemic and a looming return of the Great Depression aren’t enough), and I joked, “We’re sheltering in place in our sheltering in place.” Last weekend, I asked my husband what he wanted to do on our upcoming week-long vacation. I didn’t even wait for his response before I suggested, “I think we should just stay home.” The other day my kids appeared in the kitchen with leaves in their hair. They were glowing with pride. “We just climbed out the window,” my daughter beamed. This, and a million other times a day, they do something hilarious. They’re also doing their fair share of whining, shouting, tantruming, and acting entitled. This morning, after one such episode, my husband muttered (like a mom), “But just disregard me…like you always do.” I could not stop laughing. Humor, even the dark kind (especially the dark kind?), is both a weapon and an oxygen mask.

Savoring

There are no guarantees. Neither my husband nor I are guaranteed good health or a job or anything else. Although I’m feeling my fair share of guilt and worry, I’ve worked my way to where I am right now: Instead of feeling guilty for the good fortune we are now experiencing, I’m just trying to appreciate it while it lasts. This time with my family is precious, and who knows what the future holds. This time is historic. The memories we hold of this time are, at least for today, partly up to us. I don’t often share personal photos on my blog (my kids images belong to them) but unprecendented times…this is us in the kitchen, making fun where we can.

Making it Work

Now for a shift to the slightly more pragmatic… Contemplating what message is actually helpful during this time, I observed that I’ve read very little about how families like mine (two full-time working parents with small children) are actually managing to work and teach and supervise children. Savoring the time together and donating to charity is all very nice, one might say, but how am I actually supposed to swing this without getting fired and my children harming themselves?

The first thing I’ll say is that we are struggling too. Even with every possible advantage—full employment, good health, and even some childcare support from my parents—this is NOT easy. Some of the barriers we are facing are, interestingly, the same exact barriers we faced when we went to the office. A great many of our coworkers don’t have children or have grown children. Both of our fields—academia and technology—are well paid enough that many families who do have small children tend to have one spouse at home. The assumption—both before the pandemic and during it—seems to be that children don’t really exist and, if they do, someone else has them handled.

Mostly, for us, this manifests in calls to meetings at different hours throughout the day or at the last minute. While it’s possible to work independently with small children around (sort of), it’s pretty challenging to have a client meeting or, say, conduct an interview. Our carefully constructed schedule of child supervision falls apart the moment a new meeting gets added to the calendar.

There’s also the element of our children’s education. While there are distinct disadvantages to trying to work full-time with two very young children at home (mainly their inability to go unsupervised for more than about 15 minutes), our oldest also has meetings and lessons for school. Mercifully, these are largely optional. But parents of elementary, middle, and high school students I know are truly in the weeds. Some have children with learning issues, many don’t have enough computers in the house.

As a working parent, it’s also been interesting to see how my children have reacted to being home with us all the time. My former working mom guilt had me believing that my children would stop clinging to me tearfully and invading the bathroom if I only saw them more. Turns out, no amount of time with me (or even time in my arms) is enough. This makes things hard, for sure, but it also absolves me of a little guilt. They don’t miss me because I work. They just miss me because I’m their comfort object, and I’m wise enough to know that I should just store it up for when they turn thirteen.

So perhaps there is another relevant mantra: There is no perfect. There never has been. Especially now. Like your mom used to tell you, Your best is all we can ask.

Here’s how we are holding down jobs without turning the TV on all the time and locking our kids in their rooms:

We split the day in “half.” More accurately, we split the day in two shifts. The first shift starts at 7 am and runs until noon. From noon to 1, both parents are “off,” so they can eat lunch, feed the kids, and read to them before nap/quiet time. Both parents have the opportunity to work during this nap/quiet time and then the person who worked in the morning is responsible for children until 6 pm. Whoever is parenting is also responsible for meal preparation (so if you’re with the kids in the afternoon/evening, you also make dinner). This allocation of time gives each parent a minimum of five hours per work day. The person with the morning work shift (i.e. not the kid shift) then has an additional two hours during nap time to work. We enforce quiet time pretty heavily to make this happen. We try to switch up who takes morning and who takes afternoon, so each parent gets a few seven hour shifts during the week. Other hours can be added early in the morning or after the kids’ bedtimes to fit in more work time, though I will say that I am prioritizing sleep and health above work right now. In other words, if working from 5 am to 7 am is detrimental to your health, it’s not worth it…because you can’t hold down a job if you’re on a ventilator in the hospital!

Am I doing the best job I’ve ever done at work? Probably not. Am I working the longest hours I’ve ever worked. Certainly not. But with a three-hour commute, most of my “typical” work days were ten or eleven hours long anyway. This long commute, and the demands of family life, had already taught be to be laser-focused at work (see my posts on the Work Journal, an invaluable tool to help me do this, here and here). So now, when I get the opportunity to work, I have a short list of the most important things, and I work my way through it. It is neither rocket science nor revelatory, it’s simply a tool for coping.

Planning is Key

Before the work week starts, I grab an old fashioned pen and piece of paper and figure out who’s taking morning and afternoon shifts. My husband and I also write down all our meetings. As noted above, meetings are where everything breaks down. I have a weekly meeting during the time we’re trying to give our kids lunch and get them down for nap. My husband has a standing meeting every morning at 9:15. When these issues arise we handle them by:

asking my parents (who live down the street) for help
letting the kids watch a movie or a show
muting the sound and the camera and just doing our best
sending our kids to play outside where we can still see them

When we go with option B, we try to make sure the video is educational. A couple of options we like are Word World from PBS and the stories on Scholastic Books (which is now free due to COVID-19). The Wall Street Journal also published a good list of digital resources for kids at the bottom of the article here. My daughter’s awesome teacher has also created a Google classroom with lots of online resources that both kids like.

In addition to working out our plan for work times and childcare, I also add a few ideas for the kids each day. While we are all loving the increased freedom and decreased over-scheduling this life change has brought, I find that a little bit of structure is helpful. In the same way you never get on a motorcycle without a helmet or in a boat without a life jacket, you never go into a room of kids without a few ideas up your sleeve. I’m also hopeful that my kids continue to learn things while they’re home. Today’s ideas, for example, were to have my daughter work on writing up a few sentences about her Easter and/or vacation week (we’ve also been writing letters to people) because she’s practicing writing. I worked on lower case letter recognition with my son. In a dull moment over the weekend, I cut out a lot of images from magazines so we could make collages, and I’ve been saving paper scraps to make recycled paper. My daughter can always work on addition and subtraction and spelling. My son can work on letters, numbers, sounds and sight words. We’ve also been working on our garden—planting seeds and mixing soil—and taking walks in the woods to study nature. The kids have been working on various small building and technology projects with their Dad, both in the garden and out.

The last thing I add to our calendar is our plan for dinner. Because we’re trying to limit our in-person grocery shopping, we’re ordering groceries for pick-up. However, this service is in such high demand that we’re usually ordering a full week before we actually get the groceries. So, knowing how we’re going to use the food is helpful.

Lastly, I continue to complete my Work Journal every Friday. This, as always, is key in helping me identify my highest priority goals and projects for the next week. This is an opportunity for reflection, which I find calming, and it means that when I start my work shift on Monday—whether that’s 7 am or 1 pm—I’m ready to hit the ground running.

Listen

This blog post has taken me weeks to write. Life is very, very full right now and time alone is pretty nonexistent. The span of this writing has allowed my mindset to go through many evolutions between headline and closing line. Here’s where I am today: Sitting on the front porch, a breeze blowing in the trees above my head, and the kids napping. I’m coming off a pretty hard, pretty emotional week. This week, I’ve felt less patient with my children and more in need of solitude. In response, I’ve tried to spend more time meditating which, along with exercise, is key for keeping my mind right. In these quiet times I’ve felt called to listen more intently and with less judgment. I’ve been called to sit with pain while trying not to claim it as mine. I feel I’ve stepped over some ridge in the path, opening myself to…whatever is next.

Listening can feel passive—frustratingly so—and I am still trying to discern whether the things I am hearing are a call to action or or a call to stillness. But I think, either way, there is immeasurable value in this time of quiet, what I’ve heard now referred to as The Great Pause. If we all stopped fighting this thing that is forcing us to stop, to pause, what would we hear? What would our hearts, our destinies, our world tell us?

Yesterday, my parents watched our kids for a few hours, and I took the opportunity to go for a long run in the woods. I came to a place I’d never seen before. I’ve run and walked in these woods a hundred times or more, and never found this place. It’s not even far from where we live. I passed just by it every time I picked my daughter up from school, back when schools were a thing kids did. On this day, I simply went a new way. I took the time to follow where the path led me. It led me to a healing place, a place I most definitely needed to go.

How are you coping as a working parent during this unique time? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

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Parenting in the Pause