Bubbling.

Yesterday, after six long months apart, we finally rejoined H. and her kids for co-schooling at my house.

+ + +

We had plenty of time over the summer to figure out what we were going to do.   Back when winter was yielding to spring, our little school gatherings (being more than ten people) were outright prohibited.   We slowed down, met with each others' kids over the phone and over Discord, stretched the end of last year into midsummer.    We thought about meeting outdoors, masked and distanced, but knew there was no way we could keep enough control over the six-year-olds for that to work.   Even after small gatherings were no longer outright prohibited, we stayed cautiously away.  There were visits to elderly relatives expected; there were sons visiting from college; we thought it best not to mix our family's risks, all summer long.

H. and I met a few times, outdoors and masked.  We took a long walk and hashed out our plans.  From Labor Day to Thanksgiving, we figured, there would be no visits to grandparents; there would be little or nothing in the way of social events; the young men in college hope to be staying away.   Our partners work similar jobs that expose them occasionally to the corporate workplace, but nothing more.  Neither family is attending religious services.  One teenager has a convenience-store job, so there's that; but otherwise, our risk profiles---between Labor Day and Thanksgiving---are similar.  And so we decided to merge bubbles, from Labor Day to Thanksgiving (as long as no one appears sick or learns of exposure).  And start co-schooling again:  three first-graders, one fifth-grader, one ninth-grader, one tenth-grader.

+ + + 

You should have seen the shrieks and hugs when the little friends saw each other for the first time, the reunion on my front steps.  The bigger people tiptoed sheepishly around each other, flinching. 

Can it really be okay to step into your house? 

Can it really be okay to stand close enough to hand you a cup of coffee?  

Well, we cannot be sure it is okay, but we have tried to increase the odds as much as we can.  We have pulled back everywhere else. And it is a blessed relief to know that---now that we've let the hammer fall---we might as well let the children wrestle, we might as well eat lunch together at the same small table, we might as well pass the cucumbers and butter the children's bread for them, we might as well sit close together and sing out amem, ames, amet.  

+ + +

Once we got settled into teaching, we both felt more comfortable, and we made it through our whole day with time to spare, enough time to sit on my new socially distanced porch furniture---but all clustered together at one end--- and have a pot of tea and chat about how it had gone.   

And how had it gone?

Normal.  So much normal.  So much utterly craveable normal.  Just that.  So very valuable, an environment that we are used to, that we know how to teach the children in, that we know how to be together in.

And of course as we talked about the upcoming weekend there was the rush of delight when we realized that, in fact, we can get together this weekend.  Because, having made the leap, the marginal risk is now quite small.  And so maybe we will come over, bearing potluck dishes and wine, and let our children run around in the yard.  I don't know, we have to decide, but something can happen.  It is almost giddy.

+ + +

One of my children came into our bed weeping, Thursday night, because Thursday had been so wonderful that he couldn't bear to have a day that wasn't Thursday.  We soothed him:  Friday would be regular, just us in our house, but we would see them again soon.  And eventually he went to sleep. 

I lay there a bit longer in the dark after his sniffles had faded away, thinking that there was something of that in my own heart too, a bit of a scrap of loose end.  I decided (not to over-dramatize the pandemic) it is like when you come to the end of a post-apocalyptic novel, like Station Eleven or World War Z, and the author has decided to end the novel in the happiest way possible, by providing a little beam of hopeful evidence that things are going to get better.  It is nice to have a happy ending, and I much prefer my dystopias to have a bit of hope at the end.  But you know, those endings can never be much better than wistful.  There is a bit of hope and happiness, or hoped-for happiness, there.  But it's not the real happy ending you wished could be, the one where things go back to the way they were before.  There is still a long road ahead for the characters, a road that remains unseen now that the book is closed.  

And we have a long road ahead too, and we don't see it.  Still, the hope is real, and when the hopeful event is present, it isn't just hope but joy.  So.  We are going to enjoy it, each time we get a chance.  And in between, keep hoping.

 

Comments

[melanie]

Thank you. I love this so much. Your happiness is so lovely to witness. I am happy for you all.

We are still staying away from our homeschooling friends because most of them seem to have a very different response to the pandemic than we do. It makes me rather sad, but it is what it is, I guess. It's September again and we are isolated about as much as we were last September, but at least I don't have a child falling apart with anxiety. In that way at least things are much better.

[bearing]

Yes, I belong to a homeschooling parent support group, and I waffled over whether to pay my dues or whether to sit it out this year. Volunteering at one event is required. In the end I decided to send in the dues just because I do think it is an important group and I want it to survive, even if I don’t want to attend indoor meetings, etc. Maybe I will think of something to contribute safely.