Month: April 2021

  • I Got Vaccinated, and I Waited

    I got my first vaccine today. In three weeks, I will get my second vaccine. And then I guess we start living in a post Covid-19 world.

    That’s all good. And I do want to focus on the fact that we are getting close to living in a world where you can go places and see people. That this vaccine will be my first step in moving towards this world.

    I was nervous going to get the vaccine this morning. Anxious, nervous, feeling off, and butterflies in the stomach; all of that was happening to me as I headed out to The Bronx. Everyone is handling getting their vaccine in their own way. I have friends who dressed up for it, others who started to cry when they got it, and still others who took pictures of the whole process, including the nurse who gave the shot. I had brought my journal, as I wanted to write about it, document what I was thinking and how it felt. I even thought about taking pictures.

    And then I got to the hospital and I just wanted to experience it. Just be. Let it happen, and not think. I filled out my paperwork, and sat in the waiting room. My nurse was a real nice guy, and took me back to the room from my shot. He was an easy going person, and the shot was painless, and he handed me a button showing that I was vaccinated, though I don’t think I should wear it until I get the second shot. You know you have to wait 15 minutes, and I set a timer on my phone, and waited. I waited, and I thought how my salvation was being confirmed by waiting. Not doing, just sitting.

  • Staying in Remote Learning

    Spring Break is over for the kid, and we are back at it with remote school. When last I wrote about school, it was about the decision that the wife and I have to make about whether we would send our daughter to the school, or if we would continue remote learning. After kicking the idea around for a week, we decided that it would be best for our daughter to stay in her remote class. This is the best choice out of nothing but bad options.

    The main driving force in our decision was consistency. By switching over to blended learning, it would mean that the kid would get two new teachers; one in the classroom, and one that is remote, as this would be an every other day system. Also, NYC schools still have a policy implemented that shuts down the school if two people have positive test results. At any point, the kid could get moved to remote learning until the Department of Education gives an all clear to return. In some cases, that may take up to a week to reopen. Though I just saw on my phone that the Mayor is revising this policy.

    By staying with the remote learning, we will have a consistent teacher, who is the school’s actual kindergarten teacher, and we know, as she has been at the school for over ten years, that she is teaching the kids in the system to get them ready for first grade in that school. This, we feel, gives the kid the best foundation for continuing to succeed at this school. And it is a school that we really like, and tests academically well, so we plan on staying there.

    But, this decision means that our daughter will go this entire school year without having any kid interaction in the school, which is awful. There is all the social interaction with being around kids, learning to communicate, and make friends, and share, and all of that fun wonderful stuff. And also, learning to separate from us and be her own person.

    Like I said, there was no clear right choice. It was a decision that we hope is right, and only time will tell.

  • Sharing Photos with the Kid

    There has been a project that I have been meaning to get started on, which is getting photographs framed, and up on the walls. I have been squirreling away picture frames for some time, because when we go to IKEA, I pick up one or two. (Yes, I have a very unhealthy obsession with IKEA.) With it being Spring Break this week for the kid, I thought this might be fun for us to do together. We went out to our storage space, and grabbed the boxes for pictures and frames, and settled in on this project last night.

    When I started pulling out the pictures from the box, all still in that folder envelope that your pictures would come in after they were developed, the kid wanted to know why they were like that. (She has only lived in a digital world, and will never know that you used to have to wait for your pictures, and even then, you weren’t sure that they would turn out.) The pictures that I had were from Fall of 1995 to Summer of 2006, as after 2006, I used a digital camera, and never when back to film.

    And as I shared these pictures of my early and late 20’s life with my daughter, she had a perplexed look on her face. I remember feeling confused when my parents would show me pictures of their life at Southern Illinois University, or back in their high school days in Kankakee. Little six-year-old me was confused because it was hard for me to fathom my parents had a life before me and my brothers. My parents were fun, but serious, responsible people who ate their vegetables, paid their bills, and went to bed on time. Who were these people with beers in their hands, smoking, captured mid-laugh in photographs? Who were these people?

    The kid looked at the photos of me, with long hair, circle glasses, beer in hand, smoking, and wondered what I wondered when I was her age; who is this guy? Who are these people with Dad? What are they doing? Why is that guy hugging a tree?