Inside the Launch Window

August was always a good month.

In my childhood, I’d anxiously await the second Saturday and our three-hour drive to the Pocono Mountains. Families bound together by friendships our parents forged when we kids were young spent a week there together every year. There was something peaceful in the mountain air, the smell of the dirt path walking back to our cabins at night, and the cacophony of crickets by starlight that always, always gave me a sense of peace.

The end of that trip meant it was time to start thinking about going back to school. This never haunted me, neither as a little kid nor as a teenager, and certainly not as a college student. It also never haunted me as an adult. I always looked forward to the first day of school, as a student, as a teacher, and now as an administrator. The new school year, to me, always felt like a fresh start, a new beginning.

As an adult, August was typically the month when I had the most time to spare. My busy Julys had me running around, first with cheerleading camps, and later with summer school and conferences. I would always look forward to August because, despite having to keep an eye on my thinning checking account, I would always try to plan a few weekends away here and there. And the beach…. Oh, the beach! I would go early in the morning to beat the traffic, armed only with my sunscreen and a good book. Later in the day I might enjoy a couchnap in the central air, and maybe, just maybe, I had something else to look forward to that evening…. an outdoor concert, a street festival, dinner and drinks with friends, a date with my boyfriend, now my fiancé. To me, the arrival of August always conjured up feelings of rejuvenation and joy.

Until this year.

The feeling I have now is three parts stress and one part dread. This salty, unsatisfying cocktail has me deeply unsettled, especially in a month when I don’t typically have much else to occupy my brain.

This August there are no concerts, no street festivals, no dinners with friends, and certainly no beach days. I know that at least two of these things can be accomplished with careful social distancing measures in place, but I’m not keen on putting my health and safety in the hands of others. Especially when so many out there refuse to wear masks or still think that all of this is a hoax.

I am looking forward to the new school year with none of the excitement I had in years past, but instead with a fearful kind of hope that we can actually do this and keep everyone safe at the same time. Regardless of what version of “back to school” Governor Cuomo permits, I’m going to put on my big girl shoes and deal. I will do everything in my power to keep myself safe and hope that if I do end up catching COVID-19 at some point that my weakened immune system will be able to handle it. Because, quite frankly, what alternative do I have? What alternative to any of us have?

Yesterday school districts all over Long Island released their three-pronged reopening plans to the public as they were likewise sent to the State for approval. It didn’t take long for the Facebook moms’ groups to light up with critics comparing and contrasting their districts’ plans to others. Though I don’t have school-age children, I watched the posts and comments populate in the three community groups I’m in. In one thread there are groups furious that the “hybrid” plan limits virtual instruction on “off” days to an hour of synchronous videos per week. On another thread there are desperate single parents looking for childcare so they can go back to work. In yet another there are some demanding property tax refunds because schools, “won’t be educating my kids this year after all.” Some are contemplating homeschooling, some are calling for the governor to be drawn and quartered, and others don’t understand what the big fuss is about because, “this is just like the flu.”

In a handful of comments, you have teachers speaking to their own mix of stress and dread as they face going back to school, only to be berated by an oppositionist camp of essential workers who “never stopped working” since the pandemic started. Nobody wins this argument.

My parents now live in central Florida, and I hate the fact that I haven’t seen them since February and that I don’t quite know when I will see them next. Every time I speak to my father on the telephone, our discussion inevitably turns to how we’re both managing this crisis. He said something to me last weekend that struck a nerve. He said, “Your generation doesn’t know what it feels like to be prepared to die, and that’s why you’re all so afraid.”

The statement kind of shocked me at first, but he explained further in a way that made perfect sense (like he always does). The men of my generation volunteered to go to war, they were not forcibly drafted. The women (or men) of my generation who wait on their military and/or first responder spouses to come home safely do so squarely in the reality that their spouse’s career path was a choice. In my father’s case, a football injury and the shattered ankle that followed kept him far away from Vietnam, but he had many friends who were drafted and fought. Not all of them returned. It was a horrible reality, but it was indeed reality – especially for those who didn’t have the money or means to dodge the draft. How many generations before them were sent to war knowing there was a solid chance they would not come back alive? It was true for my grandfather as well, who was fortunate to live long enough to see his honorable discharge and take home his Purple Heart.

Fear is not a stupid emotion. Fear is what keeps people from doing stupid things to put themselves in danger. The fear that I feel – that many of us feel – is valid, but something I can no longer rely on to keep myself safe.

So this August will be spent trying to relax and decompress as much as possible, far away from the beach and with lots of meals at home. And while it will not include many of the fun things of Augusts’ past, I will at least have time and energy to throw myself into the task of figuring out not just how I can keep myself safe in the fall, but how I can be the best and most solid resource for the teachers and kids who I work for. I’m reading a lot… some books for pleasure, but lots of research articles and professional texts, too. Since April I’ve been doing everything I can to learn about best practices in virtual instruction, and this effort will now ramp up in August.

I will continue to sew masks, and I will continue to hope that one of my weekly 7am visits to the grocery store will eventually yield me a tube of Clorox wipes.

I will try to make peace with the reality that I or my fiancé might catch COVID-19. If this happens, I will try to make peace with the fact that either of us could suffer from long term consequences of the illness, or we could even die.

I will make an appointment with my attorney to update my will, just in case.

I don’t mean to be grim. And I apologize deeply to anyone who made it this far and feels worse for it.

But this is August, now.