Waiting To Exhale

Parenting Through A Pandemic

I wanted to be a mom since I was a little girl. Some girls dreamed of being actresses or scientists. Some dreamed of being teachers or artists. I dreamed of being a mom. Of course, as a child, I didn't fully understand the meaning of motherhood. I remember my mom saying to me often in my teen years, "you'll see someday when you're a mom." Being a teenage girl, I rolled my eyes as most do.

Turns out as is the case with most things—my mom was right. Once I found out I was pregnant with each child, that motherly instinct kicked in. It wasn't about me anymore. I had a huge responsibility. I knew it would be tough. I knew it would require sacrifice. I knew I had prepared my whole life to be a mom and I know I was blessed to have one of the best as an example and guide. Whatever life throws at me and whatever obstacles we must face with our kids I would be able to do it.

And then a once in a lifetime pandemic hit.

And the thing about a once in a lifetime pandemic is there is no one else who has lived through them let alone parented through one because they are ONCE IN A LIFETIME.

This would be okay though. This would just be a few weeks. It might be a good thing. It will force us to spend more time together. We will watch movies and not be on a schedule and do crafts and share family moments together that we will always remember. The problem? Weeks turned to months and months turned to years. Throw in school closures, remote learning, politicization of a virus, mask wearing, shaming, walking the line between "following the rules" but also craving normalcy, and everything in between.

I watched my daughter miss the end of kindergarten. I watched her and my son on zoom saying goodbye to their friends. I picked up their belongings from school because the day they left school they never realized that would be the last time in that classroom for the school year and everything was left just as it was. I walked into the school; hallways filled with bags against the walls of all the children’s supplies. It looked like the aftermath of a tragedy; I guess knowing what we know now it was a tragedy what was done. I watched my now first and third grader start school online. I saw the joy wiped from their faces. The boredom of sitting in front of a screen. I tried to make the best of it.

I never let them see how upset I was about it all. It seemed that almost every day I had that lump in my throat. You know that lump? The lump that if you opened your mouth you would burst into tears. But I couldn't do that. I needed to hold it together for them. There were so many nights I climbed into bed and cried. And not just silent tears. I sobbed some nights to the point I couldn't breathe. The pain of watching your kids miss normal childhood experiences was too much to bear and while I knew I wasn't alone it was a very lonely feeling.

I became more anxious. There were days I was really down and didn’t want to get out of bed. I was more on edge. I was no longer the mom and wife I used to be. I was never perfect, but this was my lowest point by far. It consumed my life. Covid data, mask data, case data, hospital data—it was all I focused on. I needed to tell everyone what we were doing to kids was wrong and I needed all the data at hand to show that I knew what I was talking about. I tracked cases and would get nervous if they were increasing. I pulled data from our state website, started a Facebook group explaining the data, emailed the superintendent, and held a rally to open schools normally with no mitigation. Someone had to listen. If I could show them the facts, they would be convinced. That wasn’t the case. Every time there was an increase in cases my mind went to a hundred different scenarios. Would we switch back to remote learning? Will events be canceled again? Will masks ever come off? How many years will this affect my kids' education? Will they be behind? Will they be scared they are going to kill a teacher or their grandma as they heard so many times? Were they ok? Would this impact them for life?

I yelled. A lot. At my husband, my kids, my mom, the schools, and strangers on the internet. I was angry. I always thought as a mom that no matter what it was, I could fix it. I’m their mom, surely, I could make this ok for them. I hated that I couldn’t. I hated that I was put in impossible situations with my kids for them to have normalcy. I hated that I didn’t have control over what was best for my own kids. I was resentful. It felt like living in a dream where you try to scream for help, but no words would come out.

No one would listen. I was screaming into a void. No one cared. No one listened. You couldn't go against the narrative, or you were attacked. I truly never thought advocating for kids and their mental health would somehow be twisted into being a horrible person. I'm thirty-eight years old and I've been called some names in my life that weren't pretty and some of them I probably even deserved. But these names? Racist. White supremacist. Selfish. Entitled. Bad mother. I couldn't comprehend how any of those names had anything to do with what I was trying to fight for. Yes, I was fighting for my kids.

But I was truly fighting for all kids I believed. I was fighting for parents to be able to make decisions for their own children. I was naïve to think even if people disagreed, they would know my intentions were good. That was far from the case here. There were two sides. There was no seeing things from a different perspective.

In the summer of 2021, I felt like it may finally be over. For the first time in over a year, the breath I had held in I exhaled for the first time. Our governor dropped the mask mandate on June 2nd. That year, our kids went to school until the 15th. Those last two weeks they didn’t have to wear masks. I let my guard down and truly believed it was over. I had about five weeks in early summer where I felt like I could breathe

And then Delta came.

And the anxiousness and nervousness and uncertainty came back. This time was harder because I had experienced a little bit of that relief and within weeks it was ripped out from underneath me again. I fought harder this time, and I was louder this time. I didn't care what I was called because I knew in my heart what I was doing was right. I cried more. I fought with my husband more. I snapped at my kids more. I lost sleep. I lost hope—which was probably the worst thing of all to lose.

Last year in school, it was normal besides masking on the bus (for a portion of the school year) and masking two weeks after winter break, which I had exemptions for my children at this point. We are now three years in, and this year has been the first normal year they have had since this started. No masks, no quarantines, no notices about someone testing positive, no social distancing. My daughter is in 3rd grade. This is the first normal school year she has seen. The fight isn’t over, as many kids still face restrictions and mandates in other parts of the country. And while I breathe much easier, I never fully let myself go back to those five weeks of relief in the summer of 2021. It’s a defense mechanism in some ways. I must keep a bit of a guard up, so I don’t completely crash like I did last time.

But I grieve. A part of me will always grieve for the moments my kids lost that they'll never get back. I will grieve the wife and mother I was. I will grieve the people who I thought I knew and assumed they cared about kids. I don't know if you can go through something for three years and not have it fundamentally change you. I’ll never forgive what they did to kids; but I’ll also never forgive them for making me question the type of mom and person I am.

In wanting to be a good mom and in fighting for my kids, I ended up not being the mom I wanted to be or the mom my kids needed. I'm angry at the policies put in place that hurt kids but more than that I'm angry that the people that put those policies in place not only robbed our children of so much but also robbed them of the mother they deserved to have for three years.

So, I'll continue to grieve. And like they say with grief, it comes in waves. It may get easier but I'm not sure it can ever go away. I don't think I'll ever look at the world the same. In some ways that may be good and in other ways maybe not so much.

I want my kids to know how much I love them. I want them to look back at this someday and not remember the crazy, stressed-out mom. I want them to know I did the best I could in an impossible situation. I want them to know everything I did was out of immense love for them. And maybe they won't realize it until they're parents someday, just as I didn't realize it until I became a mom.

More than anything, I look forward to the day I'm not as anxious. I’m too scared to get my hopes up and then have them knocked down again. The day I can say, “that won’t ever happen again” and believe it.

But most of all, I'm waiting for the day I can finally let out the breath I've held in for so long. It may be tomorrow or months from now. I hope I can because holding in this breath has been mentally and physically exhausting. I don’t know when this will all be over, but the day I'm able to breathe again is the day that I can say it's over. Even if just for me.