ILLUSTRATION BY JOEL KIMMEL
It wasn’t an easy decision. For 15 months, long after in-person classes abruptly ended in March 2020, we hemmed and hawed about whether to send our firstborn back to the classroom. We waited so long, in fact, that we eventually had a second kiddo to consider. In the meantime, we did what we could to keep our energetic daughter, Lucy, entertained: puzzles, books, amateur science experiments, a swing set, a flimsy mini-golf course in the backyard, Netflix, and YouTube …
As if that weren’t enough screen time, we also enrolled Lucy in virtual classes, with hourlong sessions several times a week. Her teacher would patiently wait as she wandered on- and offscreen, with us corralling her back to the laptop between our own remote meetings. Occasionally, Lucy would wonder why she couldn’t see her former classmates in person, and we’d remind her in the gentlest way possible. “You mean COVID?” she’d ask matter-of-factly. She would hear about family members’ being vaccinated—her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles—and say, “Why can’t kids get vaccinated? It’s not fair!” We couldn’t disagree. With a vaccine for 5-year-olds still likely months away, however, we did what we could: We taught her how to properly wash her hands, stand 6 feet apart, keep her mask snugly over her nose. Even as we tried to protect our kids, though, we often worried that we weren’t doing enough, fretting about the potential effects of less learning and more isolation during our children’s most formative years.
Finally, months after parental leave had ended and the vaccine had started to make an impact, we decided it was time. We couldn’t go inside the classroom, so we watched as a teacher checked Lucy’s temperature with a temporal thermometer, and she walked into a room of masked preschoolers. Then we dropped off our other baby, 6-month-old Max, for the first time.
Since then, our daily routine has changed in ways large and small. Mornings and afternoons are more rushed while getting the kids to and from school. The days are eerily quiet, without our daughter singing or son crying in the background of Zoom calls. After a year of largely avoiding hospital and doctor’s office visits, trips to the pediatrician have become a more regular occurrence when a cough, cold, or other symptom pops up—just to be safe. And even though my wife and I wear masks each day when we pick up our kids from school, they still immediately recognize us and grin.
Now we’re bracing for Lucy’s next milestone: kindergarten. We’re not alone. After a year in which many kids stayed home, schools are anticipating a dramatic rebound in enrollment. Yet as I write this note, Delta variant cases are rising, and the city and county have issued another mask mandate, one met with strong resistance. Amid all the chaos, educators are deciding on not just how to implement safety protocols but also how to approach lesson plans for students who experienced a gap year of sorts and how to support students’ mental well-being during a tumultuous time.
It’s an incredible responsibility, one for which we have newfound appreciation. As caregivers, we want to protect our children, but we must also learn to live with some degree of uncertainty—a hard reality of being a parent, even beyond the pandemic.
