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| Zoe and her creation Elexa the Shoebox Robot, back in February. |
One of the things I needed to retrieve is the robot she made out of a shoebox. It's a Second Grade Tradition. Whenever I'd go into the elementary school library for a school board meeting, my eyes would go right to Zoe's shoebox robot, and it would make me grin a little bit. It's a cool robot.
Zoe was fairly anxious to get her robot back. She worried about Elexa the Shoebox Robot being lonely in the library with the other Shoebox Robots, but without kids to visit them.
That really got me, Friends.
So on Thursday, I made sure that shoebox robot was secured safely in the Jeep so it could come home and be Zoe's companion in her bedroom. I also was handed a large, clear plastic garbage-drum liner full of folders, papers, pencils, a math workbook, craft projects, and pictures taken of Zoe and her classmates over the course of the shortened year. That got my pickle-lips going, and I was glad to be hiding behind my procedure mask. But the people at the school also offered me a flat of eggs. Our school has been distributing flats of eggs to families. It means a lot to us. That little extra touch of "We Care" had my eyes watering as I buckled the eggs in. I had just enough time to get strapped into the driver's seat before I burst into full-on tears.
What's that? Well, yeah, I buckled the eggs in because I think if I had to stop quick, the timeworn "Mom Arm Safety Restraint System" would have made a bad situation a whole lot worse, and I don't want to know how easy it is to clean shattered eggs off the surfaces on a Jeep JL Sahara. I was told you can just hose the interior of that thing out, but I don't want to have to try that out on egg bits.
The eggs and robot and personal effects made it home safely, by the way.
As predicted, Zoe was delighted to see Elexa again, and the robot stands on her dresser in her bedroom.
The bag of SchoolYear was something else. We pulled out the first few items, she and I. There was a paper chain of rainbow colors with a pot of gold on the bottom. Second Grade was gearing up to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, after all. What a lifetime ago. We hung that up on the mirror in the dining room. We got out her Brag Tag Necklace, which is Second Grade's way of combining classroom high-fives with a charm-bracelet concept. Every time a student meets an accomplishment or is caught doing good or anything else positive, they get a brag tag on their necklace, and they can flip through and remember all the good they did over the course of the year. It's a very personal item. It's something those second graders are very proud of.
So ended the emptying of the Bag of SchoolYear upon getting out that brag-tag necklace, for the time-being, at least.
We picked it back up yesterday, when I was feeling stronger. Zoe- she's pretty resilient. She likes our loosey-goosey home-schooling schedule, which is to say I'm not killin' it as a homeschooling mom. Not even close. She did get a little pensive when she saw the pictures of her and her classmates that her teacher included in her bag.
"I miss them," she said.
"So do I, Kid," I said. I miss it all.
It put me in a certain frame of mind, though, to finally write the Closure Edition of the Panther Pause Newsletter, which is the elementary school's monthly newsletter that I write. I won't say I was procrastinating, but I was definitely dragging my feet and finding lots of other things to do like painting down in the gym and putting my kitchen spatulas in rainbow order according to shape.
I won't talk too deep about that newsletter issue until it's published on the school's media outlets. But last year when I wrote the final edition for the year, I focused on giving the sixth graders and their parents a sendoff, because they'd be headed across the parking lot to the High School in the fall, and in my little school district, this is a Really Big Deal for families. And I veered toward the nostalgic and maybe maudlin, urging parents to tell their kids to remember everything they could about their classmates in those final days of the year, the way the sun hit the playground at recess, the way the cafeteria and art room and classroom smelled. Remember the way their friends' voices sounded in those moments, because Next Year would be Different.
It was a cry for Closure without saying so, because at a normal end of the school year, you know it's coming, and you start winding down and wrapping up loose ends and providing your own closure. This year, everybody boarded their buses on the afternoon of Friday, March 13, sort of sure they'd be heading back to school the following Monday, and we learned school was shut down for two weeks starting that afternoon. The news dropped before most kids were even home from school.
You were here for it. Time went on and hope of returning in the two weeks dwindled. The Closure Can was kicked out another couple weeks, to the 9th of April, which was supposed to be a half-day for Easter break anyway. Weird day to pick to open school back up, but good. We'll be back at it soon. Shortly thereafter, we found out the final curtain had fallen on the 2019-2020 school year, and here we are.
Our principal asked me for a short 1 to 2 page editorial to close out the newsletter for the year. I just emailed him 4 pages and a note saying we can cut anything he wants cut. In the push for closure, I could have spooled out 10 or 20 pages, once I got in the frame of mind. I had to actively put the brakes on at 4 pages.
It's hard not to feel alone while we're self-isolating. For a while I was calling this "Sparkling Isolation." Then, you see, Babies, my roller-coaster got stuck upside-down in the tunnel where it's dark, and everybody's screaming, and I was screaming, too. Last week. I couldn't even take the week one day at a time. I put myself on a self check-in schedule every quarter-hour. I felt alone. I don't think I was. We're all just kind of hanging in. Doing the best we can.
We're all grieving something right now, and grief looks different on different people. Someday, COVID-19 Sparkling Isolation will be a story we all tell, the way our grandparents talked about the Great Depression and World War II. Right now, we're searching for closure and finding its best approximation at the bottom of a Bag of School Year Artifacts packed with care by our children's teachers and delivered to the sidewalk out front by familiar faces half covered by masks.
But heads up and wings out, Friends. Deep breaths. Brighter days are ahead.
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