Pandemic Shift

My youngest son has no recollection of “the Before Times”. When his older brother was his age (3), we routinely were up and out of the house before 530am, having hastily pulled together a breakfast that would be consumed while in transit. If I had any thought or motivation for improving my own wellness, it would mean a pre-4am wakeup call to get some exercise out in the garage. As long as traffic cooperated, we could be to daycare between 6 and 630 am. Some drop-offs were easier than others. If I had to linger to help prevent him from having yet another meltdown, it might mean I wouldn’t arrive to my desk until 730 or perhaps 8am. Although I have typically worked nine-to-fives throughout my career (with the exception of field assignments), the pressures of being a working parent meant I had to push to arrive as early as possible in an effort to ‘excuse’ the need for me to leave promptly at 5pm. After all, pickup windows at daycares typically ended by 6pm. I often skated in right at about 5:50pm, arriving with the other harried parents preparing to pivot towards their fourth and final jaunt through traffic for the day. On a good night, I could cross our threshold by 7pm. Dinner was also a haphazard event of trying to prepare a meal, review incoming mail, manage household concerns, and prepare a toddler for bed. As the hours ticked on, my thoughts were often on whatever nearby timekeeping device I could use to calculate just how much sleep I might be able to get if I were to fall asleep right…now…ok 30 minutes from now. I endured a series of stressful employment situations during this time, none of which seemed to be conducive to challenges and constraints of trying to raise a family. As I look back, I was absolutely being crushed.

I had these thoughts as I was preparing to sit down with my children for breakfast this morning. We actually do that these days (and it doesn’t involve me semi-aggressively weaving through traffic before the sun rises.) We took advantage of my oldest son’s virtual academy for as long as the county made it available. About a month in, we’re actually still doing well despite my concerns for his and his brother’s well-being with respect to returning to in-person instruction. The shift meant that our pandemic routine had to commence about an hour earlier. My kids wake up at 730am now, which was when I used to come careening into the office to clock in. School is a much more manageable 20 minute drive to his Spanish language immersion program, a public school offering. His neighborhood school would have been even closer. As there is not yet a vaccine for the younger of my two children, we’ve opted to keep him close by with me during the day while my wife works at the hospital. Although it is certainly challenging juggling the needs of 1-2 children at home while attending to work assignments and other professional commitments, I far prefer my current arrangement to any enticement being offered to return full-time to an office environment. There just is no comparison to my quality of life now (in a whole damn pandemic) with all of my resources and the technological enablement to support telework from my home office compared to the life I left behind, the life my youngest has never even known.

My oldest son didn’t have the agency (or the language skills) to articulate just what he was objecting to all those years ago. I had contemplated quitting the workforce altogether to be a stay-at-home Dad, just to ease the emotional turmoil that our "normal" life was subjecting such a young human to endure. There wasn’t anything wrong with my son and his reactions to our former routine; there was everything wrong with the fact that such short-changing of the family experience had become so routine for so many. ?Those earlier experiences and even my current reality inform much of my thinking about Work and what part I may consciously or unconsciously play in either perpetuating or rejecting the past practices that once crushed me and many of my contemporaries. In my current dealings and pursuits, I try to extend grace where I can for others and preserve hard-earned boundaries for myself and my family. I see this as the way forward. I sure as hell ain’t going back.