As I sit here in my rocking chair, watching my two children working from home in quarantine, I feel defeated.
Nothing about this week has gone according to plan -- thrown into chaos by a positive case of Covid in my daughter's class. The kids are adapting to a cobbled-together version of online learning again and my husband is working at a tiny desk shoved into our bedroom and I am writing this in Google Docs on my phone and no one is particularly happy.
But we're trying.
Even when I decided to write this, I knew that this essay would be interrupted a thousand times as I worked. The drone of my daughter counting out loud is clouding my thoughts while my son taps his pencil incessantly on the table. And the anxiety of the wait for test results is a constant hum in the back of my brain.
But I'm trying.
Back in the fall, we weighed all the information, all the odds, when we chose to send our kids back to in-person learning. Now, with the real possibility of our daughter having Covid, my only comfort from the stress of worry is the pure joy they experienced seeing their friends every morning outside the school, easing their anxiety for a time.
We were all trying.
I had writing projects due this month. Outlines. Deadlines. Drafts and editing. All of that has taken a back seat to teach my children and negotiating the wi-fi schedule so we don't all glitch out in Zoom. As I see my work fall away, my heart tightens in fear that the momentum I had could be gone.
But at least I tried.
My husband should be on the front lines, helping to make the important decisions that affect the lives of the community in which he works. But he knows that if our daughter is positive then, most likely, he is too, so he tries his best to manage and negotiate from home while carrying the worry of his family's health in his mind and keeping a sane face.
He's trying so hard.
And I see and read the gasps and cries and moans online from friends as we all pivot and slide through each day, not knowing what it will bring, but negotiating it as best we can, given the tools we each possess. Some days sound mundane as if nothing has changed, and then all at once there's a cough or a call and it all starts again.
They're all trying their best.
So I'm learning to settle in. Settle into the trying. Revel in the beginning and not the finish. Plant my thoughts and my actions in the present. Be satisfied that above all else, that at least I tried...that we tried. Because sometimes, that's the only option.
(c) Elvira Berezowsky
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