So many thoughts run through my mind nowadays that have helped insomnia choreograph its nightly dance with me. I believe a lot of it is because I don’t want to impart my sadness, anxiety, and disbelief at what we are being forced to accept as our “new normal” onto my kids…as temporary (or not) as it may be.
I have open conversations with my kids about the state of the world. They tell me their thoughts, and I share what I feel with them as well…but I’m the Captain of this ship, so I stay on course and try to throw in gems of optimism for them…that I may not feel myself. So, at night, it all washes over me.
This would be so much easier if I weren’t a parent.
In my absolute desire to protect them, I foresee a Sisyphean task ahead of me. That’s one thing I wrestle with…but it’s also a topic for another day. What I mostly sit with “in the moment” is a sense of mourning for what their childhood has become. At 13 and almost 16, their years as children are fast nearing an end…these are the wonder years of adolescence and they are being robbed.
Yes, we can romanticize all of this by saying..”Oh how lovely it is to spend all of the quality time together!”… Sure. It is lovely. To an extent.
When we are disallowed to go enjoy nature together, those moments of quality time trapped in the confines of four walls or the general perimeter of our neighborhood soon become uninspiring and dull. It’s better than nothing….but we had it so much better and I grieve that for my kids.
They were just beginning to explore their independence when this all happened. Hanging out later after school with their friends, riding bikes along the canal, going to the mall, sneaking junk food behind their mama’s back. Rites of passage. All of it. Now….nothing.
They are a part of a generation already too sucked in to their little black mirrors. Screens have taken over our kids. Social media has mandated so much of their thought processes….but even then they at least had school. Playdates. Study sessions. Now they are all online schooling. Playdates and hangouts have been taken over by hours and hours of FaceTime and Discord chats.
To be honest, I have always been “strict mom” when it comes to my kids’ time online, but now I have given in. This is all they have. This is how they are connecting to their friends, and the vast network of other kids across the globe living this portion of their lives hidden away. I do love that their teachers check in on them via Zoom calls. My heart gets lighter when I hear them laughing and chatting with their friends online….but then I remember dropping them off at school and watching all the kids walking over the bridge to campus. The high fives, the laughs, the hugs….and it breaks my f***g heart.
I would give anything to have to get up at 6 am and drag them out of bed to go to school again.
Some of my best moments as a teenager happened at school, the beaches, the mall. With my friends. Adolescence is a time when we test boundaries. We are starting to step gingerly into adulthood while still keeping a strong grasp onto our childhoods. Teens need that freedom. They need their pack. Human touch is huge when it comes to emotional development….even just that high five, that pat on the back, that play-wrestle. It’s important. It’s necessary.
There’s also something to be said for learning to communicate IN PERSON. So much of the bullshit we deal with now comes from the fact that online, people think they can say and post whatever they want without repercussion. Try and talk to someone like that in person and see the look in their eye…their expression…or perhaps deal with the aftermath of an insult that just may knock you off your feet. You may think twice before you say it, no? There’s none of that now. We learn true emotional and physical boundaries IN PERSON…not through a screen….but screens is all we have now. All they have.
Yes, we spend more time with our kids now and that is a good thing BUT there is no balance and that lack of balance is not healthy. How will our kids be after all of this? How will this affect their emotional and psychological well being? How will the fear they are exposed to via their screens (and some via their parents as well) affect how they behave once this is all over? Will they regard everyone with suspicion? Lord knows every time I look at social media, I see people losing their minds in absolute panic and fear which is not something that will quickly go away once we are told we can go back to “normal”. Our kids are taking that all in. Believe it.
Will there be a vaccine or a pill for paranoia?
All of this happened so quickly. They, and we as parents, didn’t have time to prepare. My kids are handling things well, and I thank God for that…..but “well” doesn’t mean they aren’t sad, disengaged, angry, and sometimes confused. They have so many emotions and I take them all in. They don’t complain much, but I hear them in my very small house, as they talk to their friends and wonder what life will be like “after this” and will it ever be the same….I hear their friends all talk about it too. Doesn’t matter what city, state, or country they live in. They all feel the same.
They miss their friends. They miss their teachers. They miss their freedom. And I miss all of that for them.
I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like for the kids and parents who were looking forward to graduation. Those moments are a huge rite of passage for us. Prom, the pomp & circumstance, those terrible caps and gowns that made us all laugh and wonder what the class clown had decided to wear underneath them, if anything at all. Grad Night at Disneyland, the senior field trips, senior portraits, senior pranks, the signing of yearbooks…..
I had a moment when I tried to explain to my kids how easy they have it in comparison to their grandfather during WWII. At the age of 16 he was kidnapped by the KGB and thrown into a dungeon in Budapest, Hungary. He saw death and destruction at every turn. He was beaten unconscious on several occasions. This was his reality, and so many of his time suffered the same…..but then I realized what an unfair comparison that is and was. Everything is relative. My dad came from a different time, different culture, different mindset, was cut from a different cloth. What he went through was horrific….but it does not and should not undermine that what our kids are going through is extremely challenging in its own way.
Even as I write this I wonder if I sound overly pessimistic….but the reality is that none of us know when things will go back to normal or if they ever truly will. I live in the state of California, and we have yet to hear when our shut down will start to ease up. Ever changing information, suggestions, and numbers are thrown at us every day or so. If we could definitively tell our kids that they will get to go to camp this summer, or go back to school this fall….it would be massive…because this feeling of treading water with no land in sight is disconcerting at best. We all look for that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. It’s human nature to try and cling on to to hope….
That thing called “hope” is what remained in Pandora’s box…was it not?
I had my youth. I had my days of insouciance and freedom. My graduations, My dances. My days hanging out of my friend’s beat up VW bug at Venice Beach. I had the world in the palm of my hand as I traveled from Asia, to Europe, and everywhere in between. I had my time to dream and play and be as worry free as possible before the realities of adulthood settled in. I went to concerts full of sweaty thrashing people lost in the music. I went to raves and nightclubs, parties on the beach, packed myself into lines to get into Space Mountain, The Louvre, Neuschwanstein, and the Bier Gartens of Munich. I had no fear. I felt truly alive.
It’s all I’ve ever wanted for my own kids….
header photo by Nqobile Vundla @unsplash
