SAFE WITH YOU

‘What’s wrong?’, my son asked me as we walked into World Market this afternoon. It had been a long day of driving around looking for something to get for my daughter’s 13th birthday next week and to buy some food for the week for us two.

‘Nothing. Why?’

‘You always look so sad’. He grew quiet. I felt bad that he had been so observant.

‘I’m just tired. The pollen is making me really tired.’ Despite the fact that it is the truth, other issues are weighing heavily down upon me.

Besides the pollen, the ongoing pandemic is wearing me out. As are the issues at school, not being able to find a job, and the feeling that we are living in a small cage grower ever so smaller. Two bedrooms are not ideal for four people but there is nothing I can do about that. At least I’m not yet living under the bridge as many homeless people I see.

Three months have now passed since I lost my job in October. Though I appreciate the time I get to spend at home, the bills keep piling and need to get paid. I am grateful that I can still feed the kids but it is disheartening that every time we go out, at least one of my credit cards gets denied. It’s embarrassing and frustrating. I realise that other families are also going through similar experiences during this pandemic but that realisation does not make it easier to accept.

The current circumstances of my son choosing to stay at my place for the foreseeable future are also heavily bearing down on me. Whereas a week ago his father asked me to keep him at my place for the remainder of the week due to the unsafe and toxic household, my son now chooses not to go there at all. Though I have encouraged him to go and spend time with his father, he states he will only do so if his father’s wife is no longer there. For a brief moment, it seemed this would be the case. However, the unsafe and toxic issues appear to have magically disappeared and now I am being accused of neglecting my son as I am isolating him from ‘hurt’ and keeping him away from school as he attends virtual classes.

The decision to have my son do virtual school has more to do with wanting to keep him and me healthy than anything else. My older daughter has been doing virtual school since at least a month now as there are daily Covid notifications being sent to us. Now the middle school has started to send the same notifications, which are worrisome. My middle daughter, on the other hand, insists on in-person school. She doesn’t care about the cases or getting sick or even my getting sick, it seems. She also states that she cannot focus at home, but at least my son is able to focus more. However, Zoom classrooms are also not ideal. Especially when the teacher keeps yelling at the kids for not being on camera.

Having had more time at home, I have been able to listen to my son’s Zoom classes. There is one teacher who really irks me. The one yelling at students for not being on camera. I understand having to keep the camera on during a presentation. I also realise that there could be a nicer way to say this to 11 year old children who are having a difficult time during such an unprecedented time in history. But when she insists on watching them do their in-class work and then harshly reprimands them for not being able to see their entire faces or not working quickly enough, I get irritated.

A few days ago I heard her threaten my son with sending me an email for not being able to see him. I never saw that email but later realised that I should have shown my face on camera. Yesterday as she was doing the roll call, my son typed ‘BRB’ to let the teacher know he would be right back. I then heard her say that she sees a fuzzy blanket and that he’s not there. A minute later, she returned to his name and, still seeing the fuzzy blanket, loudly said she would mark him absent. I was furious with her attitude and then called out to my son to hurry up and show his face on camera before all hell breaks loose.

None of the current situation is easy for anyone. Children and adults continue to have a difficult time since the past ten months. Somehow we will all get through this. For now, though, we have to deal with things the best way possible.

Despite the frustrations of the coronavirus pandemic, being unemployed, feeling as if I am raising my children alone, dealing with teachers and the other household who want to box my son into the Stepford mold of a student and wanting to place the label of autism on him for not conforming, I will keep going for as long as I am able.

It feels as if the weight of the world is on my shoulders with no relief in sight as I get pushed deeper and deeper into the earth. At times, it seems I just cannot win at anything and am failing at everything. But at the end of the day when my son thanks me for protecting him and tells me ‘I feel safe with you’, the doubt starts to slowly evaporate as I realise that I must be doing something right.