Posted on April 22, 2020 at 8:01 AM by Jason Macoviak
I would have thought that so much free time would be like a dream come true, but it is much harder than I expected. I have baked bundt cakes and cookies and biscuits, carved linoleum, made a pop-up book, written one poem, made videos for my preschool students and their families, pulled some lino prints, done some day drinking, binge-watched television, written some fiction, checked the headlines too often, planted tomatoes and replanted the mint, played dominoes, written lots of emails. I have learned about Zoom and had calls with my family – including my nephew, recently returned from his deployment to Bahrain – and with 15 of my 17 students. (I highly recommend chaotic child-filled calls, they are quite entertaining!) My boyfriend and I rarely go out when life is what we are calling “normal,” but now that we can’t go out at all, the restlessness grows daily.
Yesterday I saw a family with a little girl who looked like a younger version of one of my students, and I unexpectedly burst into tears. Today, I walked past the home of a five-year-old student who lives on the Vista. On the post by her front walk was a small flowerpot, hand-painted by a child, with a little wilting plant inside. I could imagine how if we were still in school, she would come in and tell me all about painting that flowerpot, how she planted a plant in it, how it was sitting by the sidewalk for people to see. I walked home teary. I miss my life.