School finally opened on Tuesday!
After almost one year of my children ‘learning’ from the confines of their bedrooms, they actually went to a school building on Tuesday!
As I type, I hear a slow and steady swell of the string section in the pit of the orchestra. The lighting changes to an ominous moody nighttime schematic, and a single spot lights centerstage.
Forgive me, sometimes I think in classical Broadway theater terms. This is how I make sense of the world around me. It must be a true disorder, there was an entire sitcom* based on it (maybe we can discuss that in another post? Ya’ll thought that was funny? It was largely uncomfortable for me, perhaps because I am just as disassociated as the main character? Like I said, another post).
Back to me and my Broadway psychosis. If I’m mad it’s Chicago, hopeful, Dear Evan Hanson, happy, well, I can’t think of any because that’s not the point of musicals. If I’m feeling tragic, it’s Les Mis all day every day. Spoiler alert, this post is brought to you by serious anticipation, hope, fortitude, and then, heartache, destruction and agony. Everyone is dead and bleeding into the sewers at the end.
Owen was psyched when he heard that school was opening! He picked out his fanciest sweater / sweatpants combo, slicked his hair to the side, and put on his favorite anime T-shirt underneath the whole get up. His plan was to take off his sweater and show all of his friendship much loved Anime if it got hot enough in there. It’s kinda his thing now. His goal is to become the second grade Anime kid, and he planned to use that first day back to call dibs. Owen was sorted. He had his new identity, a fancy outfit on top, comfy on the bottom, and he was ready to make friends from a distance, and to talk about Naruto at every single break.
So Alice, my sweet sweet smart sensitive girl had anticipatory anxiety about real Middle School. I mean who wouldn’t? Middle School is torture on a good day. Add masks, distance, wearing your jacket all day, knowing that there aren’t enough outlets to plug in your computer, it’s enough to make anyone step out center stage and belt a ballad to everyone and no one all at once.
Alice has been belting this ballad since November ,when the concept of real school was introduced. She feared for her safety and comfort and nerves had her soliloquizing daily. Being the mother that I am, I was the Inn Keeper’s wife. I was cruel, direct, demanding and invalidating, and I basically told my precious little flower singing in the spotlight to scrub the floors, suck it up, and get ready for in person school because it was happening.
She did. She rose to the challenge. She picked out an adorable outfit, got her hair just so, and nervously but happily went off to school on Tuesday for her one and only in person day that week. It’s hybrid so the schedule only allows for two days of in person, and this week was a holiday, so there was only one live day for my kids. This is an important detail for Act Two.
Alice and Owen both came home from school exuberant. It was glorious. They saw their teachers, most of whom are taller than they expected! They met their new friends, most of who were shorter than they expected. They had stories, and energy, and dear lord, they had FUN. They told me it was FUN. They told me they couldn’t wait to GO BACK.
The percussion section was going crazy and they shot off a cannon, and the curtain went down, and we took an intermission with virtual home schooling for the rest of the week. We left Act One with hope, with the promise of a new era, a new dawn, new possibility. Act Two kicks off right after we get off this bathroom line, grab a box of Peanut M&Ms and talk about how wonderful the understudy is.
Curtains up, the scene is Friday at 4:00 and Alice is about to go to her in-person sewing class. This class is the only thing, other than getting Boba Tea at the new place in town, that has made her truly happy in months. I open my email to do a final check for the day, and get a letter from school that Alice has been exposed to someone who has a confirmed case of the Corona Virus, and she cannot come to school for 14 days which, based on her schedule, translates to THREE WEEKS!
I tell her. She shrugs and says, ‘What do you expect? We’re living in a pandemic’, and then she gets on the phone to play Adopt Me with a friend.
Next scene is me screaming, AFTER ONE FUCKING DAY????!!!! One day. One day after MONTHS OF CONVINCING HER IT WAS OK TO GO! At this point the play has transitioned to Phantom of the Opera. I am swinging from the Chandelier as it simultaneously crashes on top of me while I lay on my bed in a catatonic state.
I text everyone in my immediate network who can tell me what to do. I ask them questions as if they were Dr. Fauci, and they all remind me that instances of spread in schools is low, chances are she is not infected. I plan to get her tested next week, even if she can’t go back to school for two more weeks. WHY? WHY HER? WHY NOW?
AFTER ONLY ONE DAY!!!
Single spotlight, stage left, me drinking alone. Tableaus of Alice wearing different pairs of sweatpants projected stage right to indicate weeks upon weeks of learning in her bedroom. Tea cups and plates piling up on her desk. We are back in the sewers of learning at home, and the lighting is dim, and this time, the schedule has changed! There is even less learning going on, and the teachers are teaching with masks on. It’s a horror with no sense of an end in site.
Cut to the final scene. It’s February 8th, and she’s allowed to go back to school. If this play lives up to its full potential, by that point the district will have shut live instruction down completely again, and she will have only gone to school for ONE DAY in the 2020-21 school year.
I hate this adaptation of this play.
Did David Lynch direct this? Who can I talk to about this? This is the worst example of live theater I have seen since Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. I’m starving. Where are we eating after this?
What? Bubba Gump’s? Seriously?
THE END
*Crazy Ex-Grilfriend
Quick, While the Kids Are Sleeping 
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