Vietnam

My family was supposed to head to Vietnam in a couple of weeks. School would end, the kids would head to my parents' home for a week, and then off we'd go. We were going to stop in Cambodia and then meet up with friends living in Vietnam. It was perfect timing because they have just finished their first year and will be leaving after three years. This summer was the sweet spot of our friends having lots of good recommendations of things to do, some new stuff they still wanted to do, but we wouldn't be visiting them as they were trying to prepare for another move.

I cannot even express how bitter I am that there is NO community spread in Vietnam while m y own country is a mess. Vietnam had a serious lockdown toward the end of January, performed aggressive contact tracing, and essentially eliminated the virus. They share a border with China where the virus started - yet they are no longer in a mess!

But we can't visit because there's no good way to know we won't become superspreaders. I get why travel is restsircted, and it's the right move, but I am so upset that my own government failed at containment so badly.

There is something really special about seeing places through new eyes, and this was a trip that was full of things that no one in my family has ever seen. We would all be experiencing Asia for the first time. I think it would've been like Hawaii was last summer - except multiplied because it would be so different from anything we've experienced.

As of now, our flights to Cambodia - which were funded with frequent flier miles - have all been canceled and the miles redeposited. The flight from Vietnam to Hong Kong has been outright canceled and the flights beyond that have been moved around so much as to be nearly unrecognizable to what we booked. There is a two week quarantine in place so there is no way we will be taking this trip. But at this point, rather than refunding my money, the airline is offering travel vouchers. Thankfully, it's Air Canada and I believe it's treated like a government airline so the government will at least keep it flying. But I really do not need $4,000 worth of vouchers to maybe use in the future. Good news - they never expire! Bad news - I don't live in Canada (and I mean that in more ways than one).

The days bring waves of disappointment and we are trying our best to move forward. We've booked a house in Maine for a week at the end of July and I am really looking forward to the kayaking (we're staying right on a lake), the hiking, and whatever else is open to us. In a couple of weeks, we're heading to some tiny houses with other friends staying nearby.

It's all so overwhelming, but I do know I'm incredibly lucky to be cooped up with people I love.

Elaine

The Day the Plates Stopped Spinning

I feel like I've been rolling with the punches of this virus. Work not safe - pack up and head home. School for one closed - welcome to my dining room office. School for the second closed - no problem, I'll just take some time in the middle of each day and try to make sure you're OK. At first, Ed would eat breakfast and lunch with the kids, and I would try and be available more throughout the day if anyone needed anything.

Those first couple of weeks, we were all in limbo. Nobody knew how long the stay home order would last. And really? Really were our schools going to be closed for the rest of the year? It was almost unfathomable, so I just let myself believe that things would somehow get under control and we'd reopen.

But, staring at the last week of school in front of me, it's obvious that was misplaced hope.

Connor burned through an entire course learning material in the hopes of getting placed in a higher level course next fall. I was so relieved. He was busy, he seemed relatively happy, and he was progressing amidst all the chaos.

But then all those plates that I was barely managing, just started to wobble.

Everything at work takes longer than it should. Everyone needs something urgent so my brain is switching gears constantly. And I'm still trying to make this not totally stink for the kids. Milkshakes one day - a friend over for frappuccino another day. I was desperate for an activity so even signed them up for an online debate tournament - which Connor commented passed the time and he seemed to be enjoying. Helen was less into it, but she and Connor would strategize a bit together so it at least provided something to talk about.

Diligently, I would ask each child about each class. And they would report things were fine, assignments were being turned in, nothing to worry about.

So, as I felt like so many other plates I was trying to keep spinning were crashing to the floor - at least this one thing was OK. Not what anyone wanted, but OK.

Only it wasn't. And today that became perfectly obvious as I looked in ParentVue and noticed that one of my children hadn't completed a single assignment in a class. Instead, the child had "attended" each class, by which I mean, the child signed into the online classroom, turned the camera off, and promptly played phone games or perused random news. You see, I knew it was totally a mistake to let the child have a private bedroom setup for work, but I let it happen. And now I'm  just kicking myself because it facilitated this mess.

When all this was discovered, amidst a different school crisis that had the child sobbing which I was trying to figure out how to solve, I just totally lost it. I actually went into my bedroom and screamed an obscenity so loud it woke a sleeping child on the floor above. 

Ed came home from his run, I briefed him on why I was so furious and disappointed. He yelled, we talked about how the ship could be righted. We informed the child that summer would involve making up these assignments, trying to stress that the learning still needs to happen and that it would've been better just to do as was expected the first time.

I'm totally crushed that even this last plate has come crashing to the ground. There is no relief in sight. There are too many stessful things. Every day we miss something else that someone in the house was looking forward to. And there's just no way out.

Elaine

George Floyd

Did anyone sleep last night? Not sure. I didn't. I went to sleep with images of my beloved DC burning and kept thinking about how we've had so many years to end racism in this country - and we don't. We just keep trucking along and acting as if it will heal itself.

We don't consume a lot of news in our home via radio or TV, particularly when Helen and Connor are awake. But they have phones and computers and friends. Still, it took me a little off guard when I mentioned something to Ed and as I reached for the name, Helen filled in "Floyd". Although I knew Connor was an avid consumer of news, I didn't realize Helen was as well.

The juxtaposition of the two of them sleeping in the backyard last night with the dog where it's pretty quiet and safe with DC being torn apart a few miles away was unsettling. And while I do seek to make my children feel safe, particularly in this time when there is not enough known about coronavirus / COVID-19,  maybe they feel a little too comfortable?

I WOULD SWING

by Kelly Corrigan

If you took my husband away from me

Just because, say, he had blue eyes

Or a hairline you found objectionable

Or maybe because you didn’t like the cyst

that waxes and wanes

On his back

I would not make a poster

Or write an op ed

I would buy a sledge hammer

I would swing it into plate glass

Until I could make you feel

As endangered and disposable

As I felt.

I would need you,

As all people do,

To feel how I felt.

I would need to see you sit up,

Pull yourself out of a dream

Into a worse reality,

Saying

Will my neck be broken next?

Will my true love be made still

Under the knee

Of a righteous man

Who has all the rights I don’t

And knows it?

If you screamed into your iPhone

That my husband and his heritage

As a European-American

was assaulting you

By suggesting your dog

Needed a leash in the park

That was all of ours

I would not be polite in my response

I would not find a lawyer

And wait patiently for an “authority”

To maybe side with me.

Physical madness, if you ask me,

Is the most natural and understandable reaction.

Unproductive, sure.

Counter productive, yes of course,

But natural and understandable.

I know this in my body and your body knows it too.

Put your blue eyed husband

Under the knee of a public “servant”

for nine minutes

and when his heart stops forever

you tell me if you reach for a magic marker,

your laptop

or a sledge hammer