Dear Mom,
The kids are fine. We're all fine. No, really.
Well, Sebastian works 40 hours a week in a place where people have been sick but of course not tested (because apparently there are no tests available), so nobody knows what they're sick with. After a month of not being worried, he's finally starting to be worried. I got him a cloth mask, which we know won't prevent us from getting the virus but may be a good start toward setting an example at his work and shaming his company into getting all employees masks. And a cloth mask is at least a barrier to accidentally touching your own face with unwashed hands. We made some home-brew hand sanitizer (the only kind available now) and I told him what I'd heard Dr. Fauci say, that washing your hands for two minutes and not touching your face were the most important things you can do to protect yourself. (Better advice than we're getting from the Idiot in Chief, who suggested that injections of disinfectant or somehow taking sunlight internally might be good treatments. More proof we're living in the end times.)
The girls only come out of their rooms rarely, to charge the Nintendo Switch, or to scrounge food or complain that there's no food to scrounge. Sometimes they eat what I make: Atanasia almost always, although sometimes it isn't until midnight when she wakes up on her UK sleep schedule; Indiana only sometimes. She's having the hardest time, living through the pandemic while already suffering from anxiety. I let her go out to see friends (one at a time, in theory twice a week) more than I know I should. But in the struggle to balance the requirements of my child's mental health with the requirements of our physical health, I don't know how to hold the line on social distancing and watch her withdraw more and more.
Sometimes, I think you never understood what kind of parent I was trying to be. I've been trying not to hover, not to be over-involved, not to supervise their homework/meals/activities/lives. I let them fail, sometimes. I tell them no. I also cook for them, and hug them more than they probably want, and tell them I love them. And I don't let them see me worry, and I don't let them see me cry.
You always said as a mother you did the best you could at the time, and I remember thinking, well, that wasn't enough. But now I tell myself the same thing, to try to make some peace with never knowing if I'm doing this right, if I'm doing anything right. I wonder if, later, my children will think the same of me that I did of you.
The kids are fine. We're all fine. No, really.
Well, Sebastian works 40 hours a week in a place where people have been sick but of course not tested (because apparently there are no tests available), so nobody knows what they're sick with. After a month of not being worried, he's finally starting to be worried. I got him a cloth mask, which we know won't prevent us from getting the virus but may be a good start toward setting an example at his work and shaming his company into getting all employees masks. And a cloth mask is at least a barrier to accidentally touching your own face with unwashed hands. We made some home-brew hand sanitizer (the only kind available now) and I told him what I'd heard Dr. Fauci say, that washing your hands for two minutes and not touching your face were the most important things you can do to protect yourself. (Better advice than we're getting from the Idiot in Chief, who suggested that injections of disinfectant or somehow taking sunlight internally might be good treatments. More proof we're living in the end times.)
The girls only come out of their rooms rarely, to charge the Nintendo Switch, or to scrounge food or complain that there's no food to scrounge. Sometimes they eat what I make: Atanasia almost always, although sometimes it isn't until midnight when she wakes up on her UK sleep schedule; Indiana only sometimes. She's having the hardest time, living through the pandemic while already suffering from anxiety. I let her go out to see friends (one at a time, in theory twice a week) more than I know I should. But in the struggle to balance the requirements of my child's mental health with the requirements of our physical health, I don't know how to hold the line on social distancing and watch her withdraw more and more.
Sometimes, I think you never understood what kind of parent I was trying to be. I've been trying not to hover, not to be over-involved, not to supervise their homework/meals/activities/lives. I let them fail, sometimes. I tell them no. I also cook for them, and hug them more than they probably want, and tell them I love them. And I don't let them see me worry, and I don't let them see me cry.
You always said as a mother you did the best you could at the time, and I remember thinking, well, that wasn't enough. But now I tell myself the same thing, to try to make some peace with never knowing if I'm doing this right, if I'm doing anything right. I wonder if, later, my children will think the same of me that I did of you.
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