“It’s just like a cold.”

If you got hit by a bus right before you got the cold.

I think that test was wrong and I actually have strep throat, a migraine, and fibromyalgia. Maybe I should reach out to my doctor? She’s probably busy… the whole pandemic and all.

We kept the kids home from school day 1 because my fully-vaccinated son (is anyone ½ vaccinated at this point? Can we just say ‘vaccinated?’) said his head and throat hurt. I filled out an online form regarding their absences. 

I was still lying in bed waiting for Dayquil to kick in when I had to start fielding the frustration of my sixth-grader whose teachers were not allowing him into the WebEx classroom because he wasn’t on their list of students approved for at-home learning.

Is truant student infiltration of the WebEx classroom a big problem right now at the middle school? Just crazy amounts of rogue 11- and 12-year-olds forgoing in-person learning where they can interact with their friends and the ever-increasingly intriguing members of the opposite sex, but then having the wherewithal to log on for remote learning? IS THIS REALLY A PROBLEM? 

I chatted with a health clerk from the school. She assured me they’d get my son on “the list” so he’d be granted the privilege of accessing the remote classroom. Oh, and since he was symptomatic, and living with an omicron mom, he was “presumed positive” and would not be able to “return-to-learn” for 5 days. 

Presumed Positive, “Return-to-Learn,” omicron mom, Hybrid Learning, Delta Variant, our kids have a whole new vocabulary because of this pandemic. The word pandemic for starters. I didn’t know that word in elementary school. Nor did I know: Quarantine, Social Distance, Synchronous Learning, Zoom/WebEx, Asynchronous Learning, Drive-by Birthday Party. 

My daughter told us recently we don’t understand her sorrow because we weren’t kids during “COVID times.” She said it like this segment of time will be held in devastating isolation like The Dark Ages, or Medieval Times. She’s not wrong.

The tragedy of my kids’ lives is that they are old enough to have experienced life B.C. (before Covid) but they are too young to conceptualize a post-COVID normalcy. They are treading water in the sticky middle of childhood.  

Will COVID end? Will COVID end? Will COVID End? She’s asked me this dozens of times in the past two years. It’s the “Are we there yet?” coming from the back of the station wagon of another era. 

My daughter is nine years old; “COVID times” span 22% of her life. If you consider that all children have childhood amnesia ending somewhere between four and seven years old, COVID times make up roughly half of the time she remembers.  

We were told eighteen months ago to adjust to a new normal. One where items on store shelves ran scarce, masks were a must, and social gatherings were the risky orgies of days gone by. What normal waits next?

It’s possible omicron has peaked and we are riding the downslope of this variants’ case count. But after the stretch we’ve had, even cautious optimism seems like a setup for disappointment. We are a people made cynical by fake-out after fake-out. 

Didn’t this all start with one case that our President said was under control? Then it was promised to be over by Easter, melted off by the end of summer, eradicated by an operation Warp-Speed vaccine. The trip down memory lane makes me car sick.

My son was allowed into his online class. My daughter had no symptoms and was free to return to school, not that I was in any position to drive her. I spent the entire day in bed watching movies and started a show on Hulu. My husband took care of dinner by way of ordering take-out from a local Indian Restaurant.  I fell asleep aided by Nyquil, with the TV still gleaming sometime around nine.