Terren and Koda. Sistahs.

As COVID-19 continued to lay waste to our summer plans, cancelling our Berkeley Family Camp annual tradition of 10 years running, we looked to find another way to connect with the friends we had planned on camping with over the 4th of July.

After days of searching for alternatives in June, the state park system reopened its campsites to overnight campers. We jumped on it, booking adjacent spots at a popular site in the Sierras. Plans were made, friends joined in, meals were planned. Then with 1 week to go, Lynn received an email from the park system: The park was closed for a month due to “Hazard Trees.” Seriously, hazard trees? 

A few days of renewed scrambling landed us with the new destination of Humboldt Redwood State Park near the Oregon border. When the weekend came in July it was truly majestic. Martha/Fernando, Will/Rachel, Ethan/Jane, and Scott/Riva all the way up from Southern California. All of us camped directly amidst towering 200 foot redwoods, eating communal meals while staying physically distanced and trying to keep the masks on.

The girls and the 10 kids went giggle-biking around the campsite roads, while the adults caught up. Man was it great to be together in person again. Our last full day we decided to spend on an epic 5-hour bike ride along a ridge top and then 3000 feet down a steep winding gravel fire road. Many of us riding our smooth-tired hybrid bikes, it was a relief that after several adult and kid crashes on the way down the worst injuries were only scraped knees. 

So we were surprised when the biggest danger was not from the bikes. The winds were howling that day, and Lynn, Martha, and Fernando were the only ones in the campsite. The kids had just left the tent and their card games to bike some more laps when there was a deafening splintering crack high above. Lynn looked to see where it was coming from, didn’t find it, and looked back down— to see Martha sprinting away. Lynn started running, too, away from the noise. It was just in time. 

Behind them followed a thundering crash of trunks and branches. The top 60 feet of a 200 foot redwood had snapped off in a gust and fallen right across the campsite, crushing the tent that moments before held the gaming kids and covering the fire pit Lynn and Martha had just been chatting around. 

Note to self: don’t taunt the hazard trees. 

Turns out that we can do more online that we thought. 

School? Check.

Swimming dryland training? Check.

Soccer drills? Check

Gymnastic routines? Check.

Piano lessons? Check.

Group word games? Check.

Uno with real cards? Check.

Terren and Koda, in one month, went from some of the most screen-time restricted kids to being on screens for hours a day. We thought the transition might be harsh, but were pleasantly surprised when they both took to it pretty quickly. Perhaps there was novelty to the tech-components. Perhaps there was pride and mastery of a new challenge. Whatever it was, they impressed us with their adaptability. 

It forced us to learn, as well. Turns out that it is a lot of work to printout 15 pages of weekly school handouts, only to need to scan them back into a PDF for submission online a few days later. So we figured out how to teach the girls to complete PDFs digitally and how to scan documents with an iPad if needed. That helped our workload considerably. But as many working parents know, even if you are lucky enough to have a kid that is engaged in the online offerings, it doesn’t mean you can go about your work-from-home day efficiently. Every 5-10 minutes there is an interruption: what is the Zoom password? How to I upload this? I can’t login! My sister is being too loud! Can I eat this at my desk? What’s for dinner? 

What we lost in parental work productiveness was offset by what we gained by not driving cars around the surface of the earth all day after school. We regained literally hours a day that would have been tied up with each parent driving one of the girls to separate sports practices, and weekends filled with meets, tournaments, and games. That extra time meant family dinners together became the rule, broken only when Dad had a shift at the hospital. 

I'd like to say we used all the new time to our advantage and personal growth, but that’d be revisionist history. Let’s just say we made do in the new bizarre world, and made the best of it we could. We have our jobs, our home, our supportive schools and sports teams, our family, and our health, and we are very grateful. 

With a flurry of headlines and fear, the big Rona arrived with a bang in our house in the first weeks of March. As the markets began crashing and cases rose in NYC, we snuck in one last fling of recreation with a wellness trip to Tahoe. 

The conference was allowed to go forward as planned, with the change that the 1500 attendees (doctors and their families) couldn’t serve themselves from a buffet line and touch common-use spoon handles and hand sanitizer was everywhere. No masks required or recommended— just a general level of anxiety about the impending pandemic. 

In the middle of March we had planned an overnight in Napa Valley at Calistoga’s Indian Hot Springs, with our good friends the Moore family. As the virus arrived, it turned out that our stay happened the day before the first California statewide “stay at home” order, and while our friends decided to cancel we stuck it out alone. It felt like a last gasp of relaxation before the slow-moving car wreck of SARS-CoV2, floating on the warm pools and playing shuffleboard. 

Anxiety was high in dad’s ER doc community, reading stories from Italy and NYC of overwhelmed hospitals and healthcare workers falling ill. Having seen how PPE was done well in China with full-body Tyvek suits, Dad took the opportunity of the drive home to stop at all the Home Depots and paint stores he could find and buy out their suit supplies.

The girls just rolled with it, transitioning to Zoom-based online schooling and workouts fairly quickly. 

Postscript:
In hindsight: What we didn’t know then, huh? In Tahoe essentially no one had masks on, and we were all crammed indoors into these hotel hallways shoulder to shoulder for the buffets. 1500 of us eating in the grand ballroom eating and attending lectures for hours straight, unaware that the virus (if it were present) would mostly be in the air. Fortunately, the virus apparently didn’t check in with any of us. 

Mm spent the bulk of January in a tizzy over her first gymnastics meet. Before going to bed, she would tell us regularly how nervous she was (about something that was happening in three weeks?). Mom’s response was always, I understand that you’re nervous but why worry about something that is so far away. Put your energy elsewhere. 

Soon enough, it was the day. Dad and mom, for the first time, skipped Terren’s swim races because Mm wanted both of us to attend her first gym meet. (Thanks to Melina and Matilda for taking care of her!) It is a rare chance that a second sibling gets both parents and she was very anxious. As expected after attending many of Terren’s gym meets, we watched a bit over one minute of our kid doing gymnastics over a 5 hour period, she maybe said two words to us (parents are not allowed to interact with them), and she received a bunch of medals - one in every category that she could. What was significantly different from our experience with Terren (and not completely unexpected) was the pure joy and pride mm exuded while on stage receiving and displaying her medals. She glowed. For many, many hours. 

Before going to bed, she said, “This was the BEST day of my life!” Although Mom and Dad have heard this proclamation many times before and love that MM feels such joy in her life, we aren’t quite fans of the gymnastics industry making every kid feel like an Olympian or the allure of over-praising fulfilling attention-seeking desires. That night, Mom reflected with mm on the utility of her month-long tizzy of nerves, but she also pointed out that many kids got a lot of medals. Should we lessen her pride with our bias against the sport of gymnastics for its focus on perfectionism, homogeny and appearance? Ultimately mom wants her kids to seek things they love to do inherently, and not because of the external praise or the amount of attention they receive. Should we burst her bubble? These are the questions we ask ourselves all the time.