Michiko's America

My son woke me up by knocking the window of my car.  I was taking a nap while he was in his piano lesson, his first in-person lesson in 18 months.  “What did she say?” I asked, and he replied “She said I grew so much!”  I was actually asking how the teacher reacted to his sloppy playing, but I let it go.  Like many parents, I learned to let many things go during the pandemic.

Fortunately, I was able to play tennis and my son was able to play soccer through most of the pandemic.  Of course, we had to follow some strange NJ State rules, like “don’t touch the tennis ball”.  But my friends and I just shrugged it off and tossed the ball up in the air to serve. Soccer players needed to wear a mask while walking to and from the field, but they didn’t have to wear one once they were on the field.  I felt strange about it first, but it worked, and my son was happy to kick the ball with his teammates.

But on-line classes were tough on him.  Honestly, I didn’t really mind the online classes in the spring of 2020.  He was finishing middle school in June, and we expected fully in-person classes when he started high school.  But things went wrong: America couldn’t control the virus.  So, in November, I pulled my daughter out of college in California, and we went on self-enforced quarantine and then lockdown.  And my son chose online classes to ensure he could stay healthy and keep playing soccer, even after in-person attendance was available in the spring of 2021.

While the four of us lived together, the first thing we discussed in the morning was when to have lunch.  My son’s class ended at 12:23 pm.  But my husband’s call might not end until 1:00 pm or 1:30 pm.  Were we going to have lunch together or not?  And whatever time we chose for lunch that day would also be my daughter’s breakfast time, as she was living in Pacific time, although she was physically in the Eastern time zone.

My son wasn’t happy about the online classes at all.  It took a long time for each teacher to take attendance each day. That meant less time for actual teaching, and most of them gave students a lot of homework.  He resented the fact that teachers were not able to teach, and that the burdens of learning were on students’ shoulders.  

Once you start to dislike something, you dislike everything about it.  In Japanese we express it in a saying: Hate a Buddhist priest, and you’ll even hate his robe.  That was exactly his case.  He started to subtly rebel.  “Show your face!” teachers called every so often, and he made sure only his eyes and above were in his little square on the screen.  “Show your entire body!” the gym teacher shouted, and he made sure only a part of a limb was in the camera range.  I laughed.  I really didn’t care, as long as I could see that he was healthy both physically and mentally.  What else should I care about when many people were getting sick, and so many people were grief-stricken?  I just wanted my family to survive the pandemic and come out of it healthy so that we could fully embrace the re-start our lives.

I have to say, though, the ones who suffered the most in my house were our cats.  As my son wasn’t happy in online classes, he would frequently appear in the kitchen to find or make a snack. And on his way there, he would show his affection to the cats by picking them up, poking their bellies, shaking their paws, holding one with her belly up, raising the other above his head singing the Lion King’s theme song, etc.  The cats were patient, knowing it too shall pass.  The cats were sleep-deprived with so many interruptions during the day that they were really out of it when he finally went to bed at night. 

When my son finally started fully in-person classes in September, the cats kept on sleeping.  It took ten days until one of them started walking around during the day, seeking my attention.  I didn’t see the other one, who slept in my husband’s office until the evening.

In-person classes would be easier, my son had thought during the summer, but it wasn’t to be.  He felt more pressure from teachers, as he couldn’t mute his computer at will and couldn’t ignore them when they were physically in front of him.  Their presence was real and their words had more weight on his mind.  And the amount of homework was way beyond his imagination.  For his high school soccer, he has to be on the field six days a week.  He was physically exhausted and mentally drained.  He even had some anxiety.  He seems to have it under control now, but it’s been a rough reinstatement to real school.

It’ll take time until the pandemic is gone, but life can’t wait any longer.  While COVID cases still pop up here and there, our lives are moving forward.   

I wonder.  Is going back to how we were the right thing to do?  Is there a better place to set as a destination?  Or a better path to get there?  But I can keep such concerns to myself.  The tough thing is that I now have to accept the real world as it is.  Just like my son has gone through, I need to expand my safety bubble, or even break it with a willful poke, and step out to the real world and feel it, and deal with real people out there. 

Real people have their individual wishes, expectations, joys and sorrows.  If I want to live in the real world, I need to re-learn how to negotiate with them, how to keep my cool when things don’t go my way, how to handle my disappointments.  In other words, I’m going back to the messy world and I need to get myself ready by invoking love and patience for myself and for others.

It feels daunting, but hey, just like we were during the pandemic, we are all in it together; the difference is that we did it in isolation before, and now we do it face-to-face. 

It doesn’t make me feel any better, but it may make me feel more alive.