Goodbye to a pandemic reminder

As if we needed the reminder...

My family got through the worst of the pandemic the way most families did. We used every resource we could imagine to stay safe and to stay sane.

In a crisis, you want me in your foxhole. I keep my wits about me. I am Dependable. I come up with Creative Solutions. And then when the crisis is over, I go off in a corner and curl up.

As part of my being dependable, I helped my grandchildren, then-third-and-fourth-graders, with their school Zoom classes. What those teachers accomplished in that stupid Brady Bunch arrangement was incredible. For all the people for whom the pandemic truly sucked, I figured being a young teacher with children at home trying to teach a classroom of young children via Zoom had to be the single most challenging role. As a college professor, I at least was dealing with mostly grownups. I admired what my grandkids’ teachers did, though there was one day when the connection was iffy and we decided to turn off the computer and scream for five minutes to get our frustrations out.

That actually helped. We screamed and I timed it, and then we logged back on ready to tackle language arts.

On some weekends, I’d bring the grandtwins to my house to give them a change of venue. Sometimes both would come, sometimes only one. One weekend, it was the artistic girl-child and while we were painting and drawing, we decided the street needed decorating. So we wrote the above message in front of my driveway and the girl drew a smiling face.

This was back when the roads were mostly clear and you never had to worry about a crowd because there weren’t any — at least not in my world. A few weeks later, I was in the yard and a neighbor asked if we were allowed to paint on the street. I said yes. As no authorities had come to tell me otherwise, we were allowed. I have driven over that message for a few years now and every time I look at it, I smile.

We got word recently that they’re paving my street, and with it will go one marker of a benighted time. It’s OK. I don’t need the reminder of two tough little kids who got through a difficult time with humor and grace, because they used every resource they had and some they didn’t know they had.

Happy Monday. LFG.