I Miss My Village

They say it takes a village to raise a child.

Well, I miss my village. I have to admit I didn’t realize it’s true value when it was functioning…now I would give anything to get back to having its support.

Most dearly missed are the teachers. With just one student at home I’m ready to pull my hair off by the end of the day. Teachers do it day in and day out with 20-25 kids! How do they do it?? After 2 months of lockdown, I still ask this question every single day.

Teachers have raised above and beyond their calling during this pandemic by adopting almost overnight to online classes and providing resources for continued learning of their students. From the bottom of our tired hearts, THANK YOU TEACHERS! We are ready for you to take back our kids.

Also, now I know exactly what I will be gifting you every single time – wine 🍷and coffee ☕️.

It’s not just the school teachers. We miss our music teacher, martial arts coaches and others who we interacted with and learnt from on a weekly basis in the pre-covid era. Online classes are just not the same, though kudos to you for doing your best to make it seamless for the kids.

Thank you for making our children better, all rounded individuals. We are so ready to get back to seeing you in person.

We miss our friends and neighbors. The play dates, birthday parties, bike rides together around the neighborhood…the smallest of routine things like walking to the school bus stop with neighbors to racing back home together after getting off the bus at the end of the day. These actions may seem frivolous when everything is normal, yet now we realize how significant those are for a child’s mental health.

Now, we talk with friends on the phone, FaceTime or across each other’s yards maintaining social distance. It follows with a short period of mopping around saying how much they miss their friends, before they dust it off to go read a book. Because kids are resilient that way.

I miss the laughs and shouts of joy of a group of kids in my house or in my backyard. Of course, I also miss the quiet me-time when she would go to someone else’s house. Now neither is there quiet nor is there a me-time.

The biggest hit, however, is that we can’t meet the grandparents. It hurts me as a mother and it hurts the grandparents that this entire year no one will be visiting/traveling to meet us…meet my daughter. It tears me up every time I think that for the first time in my life I will go without meeting my mom for more than a year. First time in my daughter’s life there will be no grandparent spending time with her over the summer holidays. It’s really heartbreaking.

I miss my village.

Yet, I remind myself and my daughter that it’s for everyone’s safety and health that we all need to stay put in our own homes. We can’t wait to get back to normalcy but we want that normalcy to be filled with all of our teachers, family, neighbors and friends in good health. And for that, we will do whatever it takes to be responsible citizens now.

We will do the zoom calls and google meets, we will call on FaceTime and send 100s of pictures/videos – we will maintain social distancing but we will strengthen our bonds.

We got this! Stay home. Stay safe.