I was talking to a close friend today. We spent over two hours on the phone. We don’t see each other on a regular basis since I am home working and teaching online. We are used to touching base in the building at school. A quick chat during passing period in the hallway. Or a pop-in to your friend’s classroom to gripe about a coworker. It could even be a trip to the counseling office to drop something off so you can say hello to your secretary! You would think that during this current situation and pandemic and with all of us staying home, that we would not have much to talk about! But we always do! We end up talking about the weird dream one of us had the other night or Meyer’s dish soap that comes in peppermint and pumpkin spice. You better believe I jumped on Amazon right after our conversation! We also talked about the not so good and the semi-okay reality television worthy of watching if there is absolutely nothing else on! Going into nine months of a the pandemic with movie theaters with “no showing” signs outside the building and that sit empty and absent of popcorn and spilled soda on the floors, there is not any movies out or we have watched all of the good tv available!
The first few months of the pandemic was great! I caught up on shows I had not seen or finished. I ended up binge watching a lot! My family sat down with M and Ms from our current grocery store online order and watched! But now, there are no real movies out and we have watched all of the worthy binge watching shows. What is left? My “600 lb Life” which used to be a “feel better about myself because I am not sitting lonely in a parking lot shoving entire McDonald’s menu items down my throat”, is just now depressing. I may not be shoving Big Macs down my throat, but I am eating Junior Mints in front of my kitchen sink that I found in the cabinet. Now, if I can only peel the last melted ones from the bottom of the cartoon. Sadness. How about “Untold Stories of the ER”? Seriously? Who wants to watch ER shows when our own ERs our busting at the seam with Covid and we are all praying we don’t end up there or worse. You could sit and watch “Hoarders.” That might take your mind off the current situation or make you feel lousy because as you look around your room, you are beginning to also look like a hoarder with lack of organization and too much stuff. This is a pandemic, don’t you have time to clean and make everything sparkle? Oh well. It is a sad state of television.
I find myself reaching for normality. I love teaching online and at home, but, can’t we just return to what normal used to be? My family and I end up venturing out to the local Target pretty regularly, the one that sprays down their registers and gives you a false sense of no germs. We will wander through the aisles looking at Star Wars legos and the holiday aisle with candy for stocking stuffers. We also end up buying stuff we probably don’t need. We purchased a light-up Christmas decoration of a dinosaur wrapped in Christmas lights. We named him Gerald and he sits in front of our tree at home. We also bought the entire series of “The Big Bang Theory.” I would have to say that was a much needed purchase with many laughs! We have also successfully watched all of the episodes. Shopping in Target almost feels normal until you turn down aisle five with the cookies and chips and where a lady with her pink polka dot mask and toddler jump and take ten steps to your left. This is the new normal. This is our reality.
I was in a virtual meeting for my work last week. I was in the presence of other sped teachers and we were all talking about next year and what it will bring. Normalcy again? Several were concerned about the social and emotional well being of our students. One was worried that we were going to return next year, and we would have an abundance of students with social and emotional concerns who need to be tested for special education and services. Let’s put them all on an IEP! We are going to have parents down our throats about how their child experienced mental health concerns during the pandemic. How will we support them? What services will we provide? Where is their new IEP? I get it. We are all experiencing mental health concerns. I could use some mental health services myself! Place me on an IEP! However, I am plugging along. I am trying not to cry over my plate of homemade chicken Alfredo, believe me, I have become quite the homemade condisuer during this pandemic. I am just trying to keep myself together under my many days without wearing make up and messy pony tails wearing my previous school tee shirts and leggings. When in reality, I should be drinking wine! But I don’t drink. It will have to be mindless eating from the plethora of homemade pumpkin and banana breads and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies I have been making! I am surprised I can still fit in my jeans. Oh, wait? Can I? I am wearing those leggings and old work tee shirts remember?
But my close friend on the phone brought up a valid point. Don’t we all just have to be okay with being us? Aren’t we enough? As an only child myself and having my own daughter, an only child, you learn to be just you and be just yourself and that many times, you are enough. You simply have to be enough. No other choice. You do not have whinny siblings fighting over the remote control or in my days, hogging the landline phone when you don’t have call waiting. You simply learn that you are enough. It is a mandate. You learn to play alone and entertain yourself. My daughter would trot around the yard like a horse and “neigh” for hours when she was six. There were times of course when she wanted my company and wanted to play. She would look at me with her big brown eyes and say, “Mama, let’s play! Let’s nuzzle our necks like horsies!” I loved it. But I also loved the fact that she didn’t always need me. She was enough and she knew that. Were there times when she needed more? Of course. She needed to be around her friends and be social. For sure. But I still always knew she was enough and she was okay just being with herself.
Maybe this pandemic is a way for us to realize that we are enough. It is a way for us to teach our children that they are enough. It is okay to just be you and be with yourself. It doesn’t mean that you are headed to a mental health crisis and don’t know how to cope in situations like this. We live in such a society that can be so entitled, and we are so absorbed in social media and television and bells and whistles and glitter and fireworks. So many of us panic if the lights go out and there is no more sparkly confetti. How can we cope? How can we deal? The teacher inside of me and the mom that I am, makes me think this entire pandemic is a learning experience. Just because many of us, especially our children, are socially isolated, doesn’t mean we can’t cope, learn and even grow. I think about my students who I am teaching online, and I think about my fellow teachers and their students who are currently remote during our spiked increases in our pandemic, and I hope they are learning. I hope that parents are supporting and letting their children know that it is okay to be just themselves and that they are enough. It doesn’t mean that parents and families should not be learning new ways to be together or new ways to have fun. We have found ways to do new things in my home. Instead of going out for pizza, we are making our own pizza dough from the “Copycat Mellow Mushrooms Best Dough Recipe”! We have revived the Nintendo Wii and started bowling again! I hope my students and their families are doing those things too. Because, doesn’t “you are enough” mean that “you are an even better version of yourself” for others?