Today’s letter addresses the complex question: What are we supposed to tell our kids during this mess, especially little kids? Emily F. Popek is a communications specialist and freelance journalist based in upstate New York. Find her on Twitter at @EmilyPopek
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How many more minutes?
I am standing in my living room in jeans, socks and a sweater. My face is lit up like a little blue moon from the light reflected off the late-season snow outside. I can see it shining back at me from the screen of my laptop, which is balanced on my printer, which is balanced on a bookcase. This is my desk and I am at work, at home.
In one ear I hear my manager talking about the new project we are “spinning up,” as the lingo goes. The other ear hears home sounds: my dog snoring, the cat padding around upstairs, right above my head. My daughter’s voice, muffled, through the floorboards. Outside the window, small black birds crawl across the snow.
“How many more minutes can I talk, Mom?” my 8-year-old asks me from the top of the stairs. In her hand is a pink walkie-talkie. My husband ordered the walkie-talkies online the day we learned that schools would be closed for at least two weeks. They arrived a few days later, but it already felt like a dispatch from a different world. My daughter sealed up one of the walkie-talkies in a plastic Ziploc bag with a note, and we walked it across the road to her friend’s mailbox. A few hours later, we heard a voice.
The two have been talking occasionally, sporadically. Today her friend’s mom texted me, “Tell R to turn on her walkie-talkie,” so I did. When my daughter heard her friend’s voice, she started talking and immediately headed for her bedroom, just like I used to do when I was a kid and the phone rang and it was my best friend on the other end of the line.
“How many more minutes can I talk, Mom?”
Her question twists inside me. The day stretches before us endlessly. My daughter, still in her pajamas and fluffy pink bathrobe, has nothing to do and nowhere to be. The dogs snooze on their dog bed. Melting snow drips off the edge of the roof. The road outside is silent; no cars pass.
How many more minutes? The answer, of course, is As many as you want. All the minutes in the world. I want you to talk and talk and talk until you run out of things to talk about. I want you to lie on your bed and stare at the wall and listen to the sound of your friend breathing. I want you to say “Just a minute” and run to use the bathroom and run back and say “OK I’m back” and start talking again.
My 8-year-old has never done these things. Her conversations, her friendships, her play time and her activities have all been so heavily mediated and monitored and directed by adults — by me — that she is keenly aware of these boundaries.
None of that is what I wanted; none of it is what I would have chosen. But somehow this is where we have ended up — not just me, but so many of us.
Even before COVID-19 pushed all of us into our homes, we were already spending more time with our children than any generation that preceded us. Even before we were thrust into the role of homeschool teacher, we were already more hands-on with homework and schoolwork than our parents probably were.
And that’s why she’s asking me how many minutes she has to talk to her friend — because she knows that her time, my time, our time, is still being counted out to the minute. How many minutes until my next conference call. How many minutes until the dogs need to be fed. How many minutes until my husband gets home. How many more minutes until bedtime.
I want to set her free from all of this. I want to be able to say “Go play outside” and watch through the window as she runs up the hill to her friend’s house, scattering the little black birds into the air, leaving dark footprints in the receding snow. I want to see her bright pink jacket disappear among the trees and imagine her striding, confident, among them.
But I can’t set her loose from all of this, no more than I can set myself loose from the conference calls and the dog’s next walk and the pile of dishes in the sink. We are here, she and I, inside this house, for how long no one is quite sure.
So instead, I tell her, “You talk for as long as you want, sweetheart,” and I watch her face break into an uncertain smile. I listen with one ear as her feet trip back down the stairs, her voice growing fainter. OK I’m back, she says into the walkie-talkie, and I smile at my laptop screen. For this minute, for this one minute, both she and I have just enough time.
Finally time to coexist with the children without running here and there and not including them in daily tasks because you’re in a hurry to get things done. Now there’s time for the children to prepare meals with you, to clean up, to take the dog on a walk and clean up the pool, to brush their teeth thoroughly, to help you clean out their closets, their toys. Then they can write stories about what’s going on. My friend’s 5 yr old son told his dad how he was feeling since the quarantine started and asked him to print it out so he could share it later with his friends and teacher.
Oh, then there’s the homemade bread. A lot to think about what’s important with all the precious time.
These stories are so comforting in the way we see others in our situation. We truly are in this together if not dude by side.
Thank you for your thoughts. Thank you, Chris for this insightful idea.
I raised my older daughter in Kathmandu from 1985-1989. We had no TV, no cell phones but a 30 lb. Compaq “portable” with an 8 X 8 screen. We did a lot together and even with my second child, we still had no TV. Reading, singing, cooking, collecting rocks and shells–we didn’t have a lot of money but we had time, the ultimate wealth.