Day #162 Writing Through COVID-19: Masks (Have we talked about this before?)

I made adjustments in my classroom on Day 2. I threaded two paper-towel rolls onto the retractable stanchion cords to make it quick for kids to grab a towel for wiping down desks as they enter my room. This eased congestion and helped them to touch only their own towel.

As soon as one class left, I dashed around the room squirting disinfectant on each desk. This also works as an air-freshener: my room now smells like cheap tequila. 
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My seniors are sad. Today they told me that last year's graduates lost April and May of their senior year, but they're "losing" their senior year right from the start: football games, Homecoming, fall musical...all can be canceled at any moment.

They don't know yet what expectations will be in place for the crowds. Can they cheer with their friends? Isn't shouting an aggressive way of distributing the virus? Will their peers wear masks while shouting "D-E-F-E-N-S-E"? Will everyone social distance and offer air hugs after touchdowns?

Our school has its first scheduled football game this Friday. 
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This feels like such a small thing to the 60-year-old me. But the 15-year-old who still lives inside me can relate. I lived for Friday nights. My first kiss happened at a Ft. Dodge Dodgers football game (yikes). I can smell fall air and remember the giddiness of it all. I see the harvest moon rising over the bleachers.
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Moment of the day: My newspaper class talked about the confusion and awkwardness surrounding the vague masking policy in our school. "Recommended" and "expected when social-distancing cannot be achieved" has by Day #2 morphed into "anything goes."

While I saw an uptick in masking in my own room on Day 2 (likely in response to my emotional appeals of yesterday and this morning's email I sent telling my students how much I appreciated masking in my room), my journalists said that it is hit-and-miss throughout the school. 

Even the kids who tell me they are "pro-mask" (I am dismayed that we use the conflict terminology of pro/con on a public health issue) say they feel unease and odd social pressure when masking expectations wax and wane from class to class.

One of my editors said that initially, she'd been anxious about my class because she knew I was going to be hypervigilant on mitigation strategies because of my age, previous cancer, and responsibilities for caring for elderly family members.

Instead, she said Room #408 was one of the calmest for her because I'd drawn boundaries for distancing and expectations for masking. "I could relax," she said, because everyone around her was wearing a mask and respecting distancing. 

Her words made my day.
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I ate lunch alone again, outside and in the sun and fresh air. Because my prep period aligns with lunch, I have 70 minutes of non-teaching time in the middle of the day. 

Eating alone is lonely. My fellow English teachers have stopped by my lawn chair to say hello. I've shared my carrots. We are texting when we normally would have popped into each other's rooms. This helps.
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Tonight when I Zoomed with my dad for a game of Bridge, his laptop camera was again not working. Nevertheless, we played a good hand and lost only 5 IMP points on our failed attempt to make game with 3NT. 

Regardless, we had fun talking through strategy, counting tricks, weighing options.

After Bridge, my mom joined us and I told her about my teaching day. She told me about blowing bubbles.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

Trying to be a grandma from too far away. I can't
wait until Wolf is able to actually see me when we Facetime.
Look how chonky (his Irish mama's word) he is! 
Andrea says his thighs are fattening up!

Day #146 Writing Through COVID-19: Listen to Your Body

Listen to your body. 

Your body will tell you if it's cold, hungry, or (when climbing trees) up too high. 

I repeated this admonition hundreds of times while raising my kids. 

If you listen, your body will tell you when to rest, when to come inside and get a jacket, and when to back away from uncomfortable situations.

It was the advice I gave myself yesterday.
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For five months, Dan and I have avoided church services, grad parties, prom chaperoning, dinners with friends, family visits, and envelope-stuffing with the local Dems. 

Our rare public outings have been to the weekly farmers' market. The event is outdoors. It is easy to keep a distance from others. Most people wear masks, and we can smoothly circumvent the few who don't. 
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But now that my parents are lodged back in Ft. Dodge, and school will start two weeks, I am inching out of my bubble, exploring how to interact with the community while still maintaining some measure of safety.

So last evening we attended a gathering to celebrate a life event with friends.

Earlier this week, Dan got cold feet, wondering if we should even go. I assured him we could leave if we didn't feel comfortable. 

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We lasted about 10 minutes. A grandma greeted us with outstretched arms. This lovely woman sat beside us on bleachers for years of watching our sons and her grandson play football and basketball together. Of course, I wanted to hug her. 

Instead, I backed away with my stiff-armed "stop" signal between us. "I don't want to get you sick," I mumbled through my mask.

"Oh, I'm not worried about that," she said. 
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We took a seat at a back table occupied by only two others. I don't know who they were because introducing ourselves would have meant shouting into their faces over the music. I had a sudden realization of why bars are hotspots for spreading the virus. 

Other than the servers, Dan and I were the only masked people we saw. (Dan removed his after we sat down, but then leaned over to tell me he thought we should leave.)

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No one forced us to accept the invitation. Obviously many people did not share our hangups with an indoors unmasked gathering of lots of people. 

As long as our national government leaves COVID-19 response decisions to states, and as long as Iowa gives these decisions to individuals, distancing and masking will be individual choices.

So I listened to my body.

It told me that under my mask, my upper lip was damp.

It told me I was not thinking joyfully about the happy event we were there to celebrate. 

Instead, it was calculating the distance between myself and others. 

It told me I was anxious. 

It told me to leave. 
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So we did. 

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

Is there anything sweeter than a baby wrapped in 
a hand-crocheted blanket?

Day #144 Writing Through COVID-19: Stopping Time, and Antiracism

If I could stop time, I would have stopped it on Friday, Aug. 7, 2020, at 10:30 a.m. 

The agitation I'd woken with after another back-to-school panic dream had been washed away with strong coffee. I then headed to Brayton for a breezy run on the trail. I felt strong and happy, not yet hungry for lunch, and grateful for this beautiful land. 

I do love to run. Or rather, I like to run, and I love the feeling AFTER running! Since June 9, when Palmer downloaded the Runkeeper app to my phone, I've logged 177 miles.

This morning as I drove home from the trail, I paused to hold the moment in my mind, to consider the sensations that combined for such contentment, and to promise myself to hold the memory close.
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This afternoon I again ZOOMED with my parents. They are halfway through their quarantine, after which they can at least go outside for some fresh air.

I found a poem my mother would enjoy, so I shared my computer screen and enlarged the font to allow her to read along as I read it aloud. My dad misunderstood my intent and told my mom to read it aloud with me.

This would have been fine except that on ZOOM, when two people are talking at once, the program cannot blend the voices. Instead, it jumps in fits and starts from one speaker to another. It made for a very uneven reading of the poem, but I think there's a good chance my parents didn't notice.
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My dad and I then played FunBridge while my mom listened in. We agreed on the bid, but as we played out the hand, I tried to assert my strategy for maximizing our trump cards while my dad (as usual) wanted to bleed all trump from the opponents. 

I was surprised at the vehemence with which I wanted to play it MY way. I had to take a breath and remind myself why I was playing FunBridge in the middle of a Friday afternoon in the first place: to give my dad some diversion and pleasure. 

If I want to make the decisions about what card to lead, I should do it on my own time. Luckily I came to this realization before ruining our afternoon by insisting on playing it my way.

As it turned out, my dad's approach took the same number of tricks I'd anticipated with my own strategy.

Serve me up another scoop of that Humble Pie.
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In Thursday's paper, I saw that our city council had passed a housing ordinance making it illegal to live on property that does not have "a proper dwelling" with working plumbing.

I don't know if I would have even noticed this article three months ago. 

But I've been trying to educate myself this summer about the Black Lives Matter movement's push to address systemic racism. "Systemic" refers to policies throughout systems (government, schools, health care...) that perpetuate the valuing of some people over others. 

A policy that is put into place to criminalize poverty because people are "fed up with seeing people occupying property in their neighborhoods and living like it is a third world country" just might perpetuate systemic racism. 

So I picked up the phone this afternoon and had a conversation with our city administrator. He was thoughtful and polite. I tried to be as well. 

I asked him what our community has in place to assist people living in such extreme poverty. I told him I was concerned that a policy passed to remove people in poverty from our community sends a message that we do not value all people. I asked him how our community might connect with state and federal supports to assist rather than criminalize people in poverty. 

We even talked about how asking our police force to "police" poverty diverts them from their charge of protecting and defending the community from actual harm.
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The city administrator and I did not solve homelessness, mental illness, drug abuse, or poverty during our 10-minute conversation. We moved no mountains.  

But I made the call. Antiracist activism calls for using our positions of power (mine isn't much: that of a school teacher) to address policies that promulgate the valuation of some groups of people over others. 

Baby steps.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

Wolf contemplating the world at 3 a.m. 

Following Rachelle's Advice: Writing Through Covid-19 Day 1

I retweeted my friend Rachelle's Twitter post:
@msrachellelipp
Mar 16
We are always witnessing history, but crises like this remind us of the sentiment; that’s why I challenge you to write each day: jot down your new routine, write a review for the show you just binged, list events that have been put on hold—take a snapshot of this time in history.

Having shared Rachelle's advice, I must also take it, even though I don't feel like my thoughts are settled enough for a cogent observation. 

Routine: 

Sleep in an hour
Read
Make a list
Play the piano
Take a walk or go for a run out here on the gravel
Do a crossword puzzle
Touch base with students 

Send out learning options (none of the work we're sharing is required)
Call my kids
Call my parents
Call friends

Take a nap
Play the accordion

Do some laundry
Read some more
Write a poem. As luck would have it, Ethical ELA began the March 5-Day challenge on Saturday. Perfect timing! My goal is to keep writing a poem a day through this. Here is last night's "origin" poem, using the mentor text of Jacqueline Woodson's opening page of "Brown Girl Dreaming":

December 29, 1959

I am born in
Wagner, South Dakota
Yankton Sioux Reservation
USA–

My father
a late bloomer
is 30 but looks like a boy
playing dress-up like a doctor

Korea or government service?
pacifist answer for
why he delivered me

I am the family papoose
dark-haired and swaddled
in my mother’s arms

Her hair is bobby-pin curled
in a style abandoned
along with the house dresses
and lipstick
by the time my mind
captures her
eternal pose
scowling at the kitchen sink
1974

she gazes at me
in the Wagner photos
with a love I did not know

until now
2020
when she hugs
me with her boney arms
her steely judgement
and acute memory
have sluiced
together
into the past 

I'm not bored. I like doing the low-key things I'm doing. Dan is stressed as the price of grain tanks alongside the price of oil, so I'm giving him LOTS of social distance. He'll take ibuprofen tonight to keep from clenching his teeth in his sleep. Eloise, in Spain, is housebound with her dog, a quarter mile from a beach she cannot go to. Harrison will be coming home early from Utah because the slope where he works ski rescue closed Sunday. His girlfriend is a pediatric emergency room nurse, so we're trying to figure out how to prevent the her--to him--to us--to Grandma germ-spread. Is everyone thinking of crazy stuff like this? 

Meanwhile, Grandma (Dan's mom) is the one we are most concerned about protecting, yet she has been getting her news from questionable sources for the past weeks and isn't ready to admit there is any worry. Against my advice, she went to the dentist Monday and to the medical center Tuesday for a non-essential thyroid test!

Enough.
Stay well.
Write.

Rex, after today's run in light drizzle.