Do you need me, or do you need me not?

The remote learning for the new school year has only just begun, but I have already started to see and feel the emotional effects. I see the longing in my children for the normal we have left behind, and I shake my head at the irony of how desperately they all want to go to school. So many mornings of their youth were spent coaxing them out of their “I don’t want to go to school today, Mom!” energy.  Now, there would be no greater gift to them than stepping into their classrooms.

I feel myself re-calibrating also, like the spinny circle on the browser when something isn’t loading properly, what is my role now? The voice in my head firmly sets out the expectation: a good mom would make herself accessible for whatever they need: computer help, organizational consults, supervisory pop-ins (me with an “ok?” hand gesture and raised eyebrows, cause I can never be sure when their mic or video is on), re-filling their water bottle to ensure they stay hydrated, delivering freshly baked cinnamon buns directly to their work-space….wait, what?! Did I really just do that? Way to go Super-Mom, that is a dangerous precedent to set in the first week!

So as I run my introspective inventory of how I am feeling and what my direction should be on this, I come out lost. The part of me that wants to rescue my children with cinnamon buns when I see them sad has oozed all over the part of me that knows experience is a valuable teacher, and the most profound growth comes from contrast. I try the empathy card, and imagine what I would felt like at their age if I was forced to do classes from home, all my extra curriculars were cancelled, and my freedom to roam severely hijacked. Ugh. That isn’t helping. I feel grief and loss and disappointment, and when I snap out of the memory, I find myself mixing a batch of cookies for the kids for when they log-off, what?!  When did June Cleaver take over my psyche?

I feel like I am back in my role as HR Manager when Headquarters laid out new policies for the field offices, and we had to implement and defend them, even though we knew they didn’t fit.  Finding the bright silver lining when I also feel that missing senior year of high school just sucks? Even looking ahead to brighter times doesn’t work as we tread in the murky waters of what first year university might look like.  My inner voice says, “maybe you should just sit this one out – you have nothing positive to offer here”.

So as I pull these petals off the daisy, wondering how to best show up for my kids in this new world, I am reminded of the effects of hot water, and how our own perspective can powerfully change the outcome:

Be well parents, whatever your circumstances, you got this 🙂