Hope Lost

Today seemed like an ordinary day.  But by late morning, one simple post in my work chat deflated my spirit.  School buildings will officially be closed for the rest of the academic year.  The governor announced it during his daily press conference.  Not that we had much hope that schools would reopen, but the loss of that hope is pretty soul-destroying.  Jacob's school year would have been done in about a month, leaving only about two possible weeks after the previous deadline, so I figured he was done.  And honestly, I'm less worried about him.  He's doing his work mostly on his own (except for a day here or there where it becomes everyone's problem) and seems to be learning new things.  But for Carter, who's still in the midst of learning really foundational stuff, it stinks to be essentially stuck in review mode.  They're not doing a lot of new learning aside from solidifying whatever skills they had already been working on, though maybe that will change a bit now.  But the thought of him not being back in a classroom setting until at least September (and who knows what even that might look like?) is distressing, because he struggles with home learning.

It's not that he's a complete disaster, by any means, but suffice it to say that school is a far better setting for him.  First, he had such a sweet, supportive teacher.  She saved Jacob's entire school experience, and while Carter tended to complain about her more than I expected, I think deep down he liked her.  I hate him missing time with her, because I think she's been good for him.  If nothing else, he went from behind in reading to right on target.  In fact, the other day when he had his first video reading session, he did amazing on his sight words--meaning he officially knew more of them now than he did when he was in school.  He also did very well on the book he read her.  That was comforting given all of the battles we have over his school, because clearly something is sinking in.  Math seems fine, too--as long as he takes his time.  But writing may be the bane of our entire existence right now.  He hates it.  He only has to write two sentences per day, and it is a battle every step of the way.  He doesn't know what to write, he doesn't know how to spell much beyond the basics, and his handwriting is all over the place.  He's not staying in the lines, he doesn't capitalize or space properly, and trying to work him through spelling (or really anything) inevitably leads to him wanting to quit.  No matter how simple or how gentle the guidance, he overreacts and storms off.  Or he gets frustrated and takes his paper somewhere else, only to get distracted and lead us into another battle to get him back on task.  Even though I know he's not the most enthusiastic student in school, I know he doesn't routinely have tantrums with his teacher, so it sucks that we have to deal with it.  And now, any hope I had for one last month of real learning is gone, and this is our semi-permanent reality--not just a stopgap for a couple months, but the solution for a full third of the school year.  And now I feel like there's more pressure to find a way to keep him on track through the summer so things don't get any worse.  But how?

Being out of school nearly six months was once unfathomable.  Now here we are.  Worldwide kids have missed significant school, so how do you even begin to catch all of these kids up?  When the teachers can barely teach what they need to in a year, how do you fit in a bunch of catch-up, too?  And if we're struggling this much, I can't imagine what this looks like in households where parents are busy working outside the home all day, where English isn't the first language, where there are health challenges, or where parents just don't care.  How can those kids ever catch up?  And that's barely even scraping the surface when you start thinking about special education students or other special needs kids who aren't getting the services they need.  Those parents must be completely overwhelmed.

Despite the challenges, I suppose I still come out of this feeling lucky.  We don't have kids in big milestone years.  If this happened last year, Carter would have missed out on the end of Kindergarten and Jacob would have missed out on the end of his beloved elementary school years, including his moving up ceremony.  If this was next year, Carter would miss out on his fun moving up ceremony to his new school and our farewell to his current school would be cut sadly short.  And for those high school and college seniors who are missing out on things like prom, in-person graduations, study abroad opportunities, and all of those amazing "lasts", this has to be devastating.  My prom weekend changed my life in so many ways.  After dreaming about prom for years, I had an amazing night and weekend away with my friends, and I got my first real boyfriend.  It was practically a storybook weekend--I don't think I could have written it better.  And to think I could have missed all of that...ugh.  And if you would have taken away the end of my college experience, I have no idea where my life would have ended up.  The loss of my last months in the dorm with my friends would have been bad enough, but what might have happened if my internship (which led to my job and eventually my marriage) would have been stopped short as well?  It's mind boggling to think of how things might have turned out differently.  

On top of the school stress, I had to sit through an office-wide Zoom meeting today to hear more about possible furlough situations coming up.  Initially the University indicated they would avoid furloughs.  But this has seemingly gone on longer than expected, and last week it came out that the medical center would be starting furloughs.  This week, news came through that the rest of the University needed a 20% salary reduction, so it would be impacting our office as well.  We found out today that they're trying to spread the burden as widely but thinly as they can throughout the organization, so it sounds like nearly everyone will be impacted, but to a lesser degree.  My guess is that we will have partial rolling furloughs, which might mean a week on and a week off.  Unemployment may fill the gaps in between, but given all the problems people have had with the system, I don't look forward to digging into that.  I'm trying not to be too anxious about it, but that probably won't stop me from freaking out early next week when we should find out more.

Part of my struggle with this is that it's bringing back memories of my layoff five years ago.  Even though I was the only person who did certain tasks (or knew how to do them), I was let go.  Clearly the decision-makers didn't seem to care how that might impact clients or colleagues, so I feel history repeating itself as there may be people making decisions about my job without knowing how it could impact what we do as a team.  Not that I'm not expendable (pretty much no one is in a case like this), but my boss is already overloaded (and has a lot of personal stuff to deal with as well) and I worry about the data load on her...not to mention how I'd fare without her if the roles were reversed for a time.  We also have a really big giving day coming up and the thought of being without any of our team is somewhat daunting.  So that was a bit of a blow this week, but I just keep hoping that whatever time I have off I can use to the fullest with the kids, rather than spending all day every day sitting at my computer like I do now.

Beyond  that, I'm starting to worry about making decisions for the kids for summer.  How can we even know what's going to be available, let alone what's going to be safe?  Usually deposits are due around now, but how on earth can we plan anything without knowing what our work situations might look like?  Craig can work from home since his office is under renovation, but who knows how long that might last?  And staffing might be an issue with Jacob's camp since they'll be making decisions so late, so spots might be limited.  Ugh.

I also keep coming back to the fact that we won't have a vaccine for a year and we'll inevitably have to reopen at some point before it's truly safe.  Yet areas that have begun to reopen are seeing new infections.  Heck, even areas that technically aren't reopened (like Buffalo) are seeing rising hospitalization rates again.  I feel confused because all of the untested but presumed cases and now antibody tests indicate more people have been infected than numbers show, and therefore the death rate in healthy adults could be really low--like, around the flu.  But all these deaths have been in a much shorter time than flu season, and these figures are happening despite significant social distancing.  We can't deny that hospitals have seen unprecedented surges and deaths, medical workers are overwhelmed, and this illness is extremely difficult to treat.  So if it's really not much worse than the flu (spoiler: it is), then how is it so bad in some areas?  Areas that aren't bad can thank social distancing for the fact they're not in dire straits like others, but that's still not really a free pass to open up.  Add in increased travel in reopened areas that will bring infections elsewhere, and we're right back to where we were.  It's a mess and it seems like there is no good solution.  And don't give me that, "Just because it's open, it doesn't mean you have to go out," because people subconsciously take their cues from the government and once businesses reopen people won't have the choice to stay on unemployment.  So people will go out and things will get worse.  It's all worrisome and I wonder when we'll ever get back to normal.

For all these reasons I try to stick to one day at a time, but it's getting harder.  For now I just need to focus on having a nice weekend, and leave next week's worries for next week.  God knows there's enough of them.