Throughout this process our kids have been in virtual learning 2-3 days per week. Despite the difficulties, they’re getting good grades and making the best of it. I am beyond grateful for the flexibility to work from home on some of those days. I’m pretty good at tuning things out and getting work done under normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances, are they?
I’m writing this and I can hear at least two power tools going two floors beneath me. When the tools aren’t going, I can hear the guys talking through the window in my home office. That will be another job for Henry at some point in the future. Our windows are terrible and almost all of them need replacing. We’re not sure if we’re going to do the windows first or put up the ceiling fans we bought three years ago. See? There’s that focus thing again.
When the hammers are hammering, you can feel it in the floors. When the impact drill drives concrete screws through the new footers they’re laying down, the whole house shakes. When our teenage kids are in virtual classrooms you can hear them both most of the time. It’s a weird and artificial counterpoint between eighth grade language arts and ninth grade science or ninth grade “skills” class going on at the same time as eighth grade technology. We’re seven months in and I still have no idea what they do in “skills” class. There was a day last blur, or maybe the blur before, where I had a Teams meeting at the same time they had online classes while it sounded like Henry had decided to pull out the nuclear jackhammer. And then he or one of his guys unplugged the power strip with the cable modem and WIFI router on it. There were three seconds of a jackhammer intro before the duet of teenage freakout kicked in. I sipped lukewarm coffee and laughed about it. What else can you do?
It’s hard to concentrate. It’s hard to sit down with the list of things “Dad, I think they turned off the WIFI again…” to do and march down it. It’s hard to be as productive as “I need help graphing something” I’d like to be. It’s hard to focus “Can you come to the basement? I have a question about the electric” on whatever thing I’m creating. It’s been… loud. It’s been hard to do other work, “real work,” as they might say.
I’ll confess to you that most of these days when I’ve been home, there’s been at least one moment when I wished none of it was happening. When I think maybe I could grab one of their Harry Potter wands and say “Transformatum Endum” or “Finalis Remodelis,” or whatever the words might be, and make it all go away. (PSA, “their” refers to my kids, who each have a Harry Potter wand, not the construction guys. I have no idea if they have wands or not.)
It’s hard to stay on task. It’s hard to keep the finish line in mind and I’m reminded as all of it races along, or stalls out all at once, that my finish line may not be the right one. I’m reminded that the big-picture priorities may not be the ones I’m focused on. I’m reminded that the ultimate success of the kids means academic, social, and emotional accomplishment. I’m reminded that we have an end goal in mind for the whole house and the work being done in any particular moment in the basement is one small step toward that. I’m reminded that my moments are not micro-managed and that I’m entrusted with one piece of a vision that is larger than a to-do list and a line of check boxes of emails to write, reports to assemble, and plans to make. I’m reminded that some moments and some days move in leaps and bounds and some trudge along, but each one is a gift, whatever it looks like.
Some days I wonder how much I’ve wasted and I’m reminded that grace is space. Space to live and move and breathe. Space to stop and smell the roses, as they say. Space to step back from the lists and the noise and contemplate ceiling fans or nuclear jackhammers or if there might be a better WiFi router out there. How long do those last anyway…?
So there and then, on that afternoon with the teenage freakouts and my suddenly suspended Teams meeting, I made three cups of chocolate milk and took them up to the kids. We complained, we shrugged, we got chocolate milk mustaches, we laughed. Classes started again for them and I went back to my desk, pulled out the list and finished my chocolate milk. What else can you do?