Day 54 - Summer Dreams

After a cold, wet, SNOWY start to our week, the past few days have been a breath of springtime.  Mid 60's with soft, warm rain off and on throughout the day, trees bursting into full leaf, blossoms blazing with pinks and purples against the sky.  Days that make you think summertime could actually happen.

But we are not there yet.  Still in the trenches of this strange, surreal school year.  The end is is sight but the workload has not lightened up yet.  We have sunk into the rythm of our school days, which continue to involve a lot of sleeping in and even more nagging and cajoling of children to do their work and finally giving in and letting them retreat to their screens.  Nat has finished his semester but my teaching days have gotten longer as I spend more and more time searching through missing work and incomplete assessments to see if anything has been turned in, and sending list after list of assignments to parents and students.  This is what teaching has become in the age of Corona.  On the plus side I have finally been able to connect and have at least one online learning session with all 14 of my students!  It only took 8 weeks! (this is so hard!) 

There are things to enjoy even in the trenches, of course. High points of the week have included the three crazy kittens-- the most social and adorable tiny things ever, they have been an amazing distraction. Also I've been enjoying cooking new recipes just about every other day.  We are blessed to have access to delicious, fresh ingredients that can be combined into amazingness.

Kittens make online school more fun but decidedly less productive. 

Jack loves Walter, the tiniest kitten.

Sweet potato tacos!  Crazy good.

 Also our wonderful middle school teachers did a driving parade on Wednesday so it was a great chance to stand around in the spring sunshine and then get all teary as we waved frantically at the cars full of teachers and their families, trying to impart all of our gratitude to them through our smiles...

 And!  We have a robin nesting in our trellis!  And one bird has visited my new bird feeder so, progress!

And I have two more tulips blooming and we just planted wildflower seeds in the back garden by the garage.  It's not ALL schoolwork all the time, I guess.. Just mostly.

We've been holding on to summer as this line of demarcation.  Something to look forward to and dream about.  Not that this is a new idea.  Our summer dreams get us through this impossibly long 4th quarter every year, don't they? But this year.  Oh, 2020.  The longest 4th quarter in know history, and summer dreams that have been vaporizing and vanishing at every turn.  Today Cleveland Heights announced that all summer programs are cancelled.  All of them.  Sports, Cain Park, block parties, the pool.  All of it.  For the whole summer. I was not surprised by this announcement.  I knew in my heart it was coming.  But it was a blow, to have it made official.  Turns out I'd been holding on to some of that summer dreaming deep in my heart, to get me through these monotonous days.

(Side note: Interestingly enough at his press conference today our Governor announced that pools, along with daycares and summer camps, can open with safety measures in place on May 31st.  Safety measures being things like 6 foot spacing and hourly disinfecting of all surfaces so I see why most public pools are not planning to open.  And honestly I am feeling deeply uncomfortable with the idea of opening just yet, when we are still at the top of our peak/plateau of cases.  I feel like it is an awful idea.  Even as I am bereft at the thought of continuing, interminably, to shelter-in-place.  It is ok to feel more than one thing...)


Because I am feeling a lot of things today, indulge me as I dwell on everything we have lost.  (caveat:  I know I am reveling in privelege all over the damn place because every.single.thing I am about to list is a luxury and I KNOW we are just fine and lucky and all that.  I know! but this is where I am right now)

Our road trip to California!  All that planning and dreaming.  Sigh.  Our kids' end of year concerts and awards assemblies and class picnics and celebrations.  Ivy's first sleep away camp. Jack's Reaching Heights Music camp. Tigersharks swimming. Soccer that seems to go way too long into the summer ... but why did I complain so much about it??  Afternoons at Cumberland Pool!  The luxury of just walking over there and cooling off and seeing friends, so easy! And all of the festivals that we feel overwhelmed by and try to go to every.single.one and can never manage to do it all?  Cancelled so there goes that problem.  The places we love to visit-- Botanical Gardens, Art Museum... closed. Our favorite beach-- too crowded to visit safely.  Parties and cookouts and just being with our groups of friends--nope. ( I miss our friends so much!)

I am struggling to see what is left of our summer without all of these things.  And as our summer plans evaporate so does my drive and motivation to finish this school year because how will our lives change anyways when school is done?  At least right now we  have a structure to our days-- such as it is-- and things to get done and accomplish-- such as they are.  What will happen to us with that removed?   Will we completely morph into screen-bound slugs, retreating en masse to the cool of the basement as we tune out to our respective electronic addictions?  This is not the summer dream I had in mind.

So!  New plans!  Right now we see two good options.  One-- stay close to home (REALLY close to home) and immerse ourselves in chickens and gardening and all those home and yard improvments we never have time to do.  Maybe if we're feeling like risk takers we have a couple friends over and stand 6 feet apart with masks on for a campfire.  We try to make the best of EVEN MORE ENFORCED FAMILY QUALITY TIME (is it still quality when it comes in endless quantities??) and put in the work needed to structure our days and keep kids off screens while not going anywhere.  Parts of this scenario seem so lovely and wholesome but you guys, we are just not good at not going anywhere.  We eat each other by 10 am without diversions!  I have a deep sense that this plan might not go well for us...

Option Two-- spend an inordinate amount of time at Farley's. (again, how lucky are we, that we have this other place we can go??) Even though it won't be the same (how do you socially-distance cousins and Farley's friends? It will be so strange...) there are some definite bonuses:  a lake to swim in, boats to play with, space in the front lawn to place chairs 6-10 feet apart for acceptable happy hours, and the fact that we don't really have a history of "going places" all the time while we are there, so perhaps the feelings of loss would not be so intense.   I've always harbored a dream of spending so long at the Point that I need to have my mail forwarded there.  Maybe this is the year?

Option Three (not a GOOD option but I'm not taking it off the table)-- We buy a $2500 1973 RV painted in Cleveland Browns colors and drive around the country all self-contained like little turtles, only emerging in National Parks and to shop or do laundry.  There are a million reasons why this is a terrible idea... but oh!  It would be memorable!

2020, you can do a lot of things, but you can't stop me from summer-dreaming!