Skipping Stones

We marvel at how when we watched Contagion years ago, it was at the time pure fiction. 🎥 “Imagine if…?” This week, we saw Tenet. Amazing -- I understood very little (my husband says we will watch YouTube videos, then see it again) -- and also fiction.☝🏽 If art is rooted in reality, and reality is inspired by art, here we are. The surrealness of back to school. 📝 Parents are anxious and children are confused. As a teacher, I myself have yet to really understand what ‘back to school’ will look like. 🤷🏻‍♀️ We get emails, memos, updates, updates of updates on the daily. We fill out surveys, and then new surveys. 💻 The same goes for parents. With two kids in high school, our family is opting for remote learning. 🏡 At least for now. I myself will be going in to teach next week. Even so, much is up in the air. I saw our Premier on the news, touring a school, showing how classrooms are set up for safe distancing, and how protocols are all in place. 📺 Maybe at this one school being showcased to the media, they are. But we don't know yet that this is the case everywhere.🙅🏻‍♀️

Children. Our most precious, and vulnerable gifts from the Gods.❣️ We would readily put ourselves in the line of fire for them. In Tenet, Neil (Robert Pattison is brilliant!) asks The Protagonist (John D. Washington -- wow, just wow!) if he is willing to take a child hostage. Even as a brutal and hardcore “by all means necessary” spy, The Protagonist has limits when it comes to the protection of a child. “No”, he answers. ❌

And yes, we trust our governments to keep us safe. We hope our children will be okay next week.🙏🏽 But with COVID-19, all bets are off. This is a new and unprecedented time. 😷 One of my sisters is back in the classroom, a primary French immersion teacher, ready and set to go. Her twin has taken a leave of absence, in light of stress surrounding this pandemic, and to focus on her beauty and skincare brand. Our third sister is taking her university classes online. And our fourth and her husband are wavering on whether to keep their young daughter home or not. Our Mom, who occasionally supply teaches, feels she should stay home this year. In one family alone, like so many of you, we are all over the map.

As with the graduated lockdown, when all of this started, every day was different. Painting by numbers we literally could not even see, we followed the lead of whoever was in charge. I myself panicked a little. Scared for my parents, my family, humanity at large. 👀 A wipeout of millions. Cavalier attitudes of some, mixed with grave fears of others. Right or wrong, we all have our feelings on COVID-19. Conspiracies. Intentional unleashing. Masks: crock or not. We decide what works best in our lives. Front line workers and many others have been working all along. Numbers are up and down all over the world. Countries are going into serious debt due to economic hemorrhaging. 🌎 Despite seasons that have come and gone, this is still all new. We look at our children and our hearts hurt for them.💔 So, whatever we each decide with regards to back to school, let’s be patient and kind with one another. There are many rocks to be thrown. If we aim them to the water, practicing the artfulness of skipping stones, rather than hard-hitting words and attitudes, we all win. Particularly, in this time of such uncertainty. 🙏🏽

Good luck as this new phase begins. 💫❤️