Today the governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, canceled school for the rest of the academic year. I can’t even begin to process what this means. I haven’t told Emma yet because I do think she will be a little sad about it. Right now she is loving the ability to sleep in, not have to go to PE, etc. She is thinking about how fun it is…but I don’t want to tell her that she won’t go back to her 1st grade classroom again. She won’t see her teacher again, not as “her teacher.”
The teacher called today and said that they are all planning a parade through the neighborhoods with the PTA. Thinking about it now, it kind of makes me want to cry. Emma loves her first grade teacher.
I have no idea how life is going to be for the next few months. Even thinking about it seems insane. Today in Virginia, we only have 254 cases. It doesn’t sound like that many. Of course, some are not diagnosed, so we can’t count those people in that number. With numbers this low, though, it means we still are at the bottom of the soon-to-be rapid climb. That means that whatever craziness we are feeling today will be completely different a week from now, and then a week from then.
Will my job be okay with me working from home? Will I have to keep writing lesson plans for my first grader so that she can be up to speed when she goes back to school for second grade? How can I keep a preschooler busy while I am trying to work? Will I be able to keep Ava stimulated and educated while I am also trying to homeschool her sister? Do I have to keep paying the vacation fee for daycare even though I am not sending my kids in? Will my kids have a daycare to go back to? Will I have a job after this? I had a job before that laid me off when they had a time of financial distress. I didn’t think I would have to worry about that again, at least for a while.
The answer to the question, “I wonder what things will look like when this is all over,” seems to change from day to day. I can’t even imagine what my thoughts on the answer will be a week from now, let alone a month or three.