How Emptying Sand Out of My Son’s Shoes Signals a Return to “Normal”
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I picked up my first grader’s shoes one afternoon and sand spilled out of them all over the wood floors of our living room.
It was both a familiar and foreign feeling of annoyance. Ever since my oldest child, now in third grade, started at our neighborhood elementary school four years ago, I have emptied sand out of shoes either onto the floor, or when I have my act together a little more, outside or into the trashcan, almost every school day.
Every school day, that is, until the world changed last March when we attended the annual Family Day picnic and field day with some trepidation, the kids went on Spring Break, and then they never went back. Neither of my school-age kids had been to in-person school until my first grader returned to the classroom last month.
His return to school was the first step toward a more normal existence for our household. My wife is a healthcare worker, so she was fully vaccinated by January. I was able to procure my first dose and will be fully vaccinated in early April.
Spring arrived many weeks ago in Florida with oppressively hot and humid days intermixed with the occasional refreshingly cool day when clumps of pollen and long-forgotten brown leaves rain down from the oak trees and dance and scuttle along the streets in the gusty winds.
Even though I can feel summer — my most hated season of the year — creeping closer, I can’t deny that a feeling of hope has snuck up on me. I guess that’s what this feeling is?
For the first time in a year, we have a bit of a routine that doesn’t solely involve logging into various screens. Returning to the fold of our elementary school community has been relatively seamless from a logistical standpoint. The schedules and rituals are much the same as we remember. It has been a mental adjustment rather than a practical one. Because our schools were open the entire academic year, we have felt like outsiders living in some sort of dystopian parallel universe. It’s kind of like if there were hordes of zombies on the loose, but only us and a handful of other families in our social orbit acknowledged their existence.
It’s made our daily life bizarre and stressful, and I’ve probably struggled the most with it because I care so much about what people think about me. Even people I don’t know very well or particularly like.
Every time I overhear my kids chiding their little neighbor friends about mask wearing or other COVID precautions, I cringe. They are right and I’m proud of them for being confident enough to stand up for what we’ve taught them, but I also feel ashamed because as a grown adult I still have trouble shrugging off the uninformed or even toxic beliefs of others. I allow them to occupy way too much of my head space.
What it comes down to is once again my kids are leading me forward rather than the other way around. Because I am an introverted and socially anxious person, having children has certainly changed the way I live my life. And while I have fallen back into my more comfortable zone during the pandemic, I can feel the small tugs of normalcy pull on my line. Like how a fishing rod pulses a few times in your hand when a fish is on the verge of taking the bait. (Yes, I did take the kids fishing recently. No, I don’t know anything about fishing. Why do you ask?)
As the weird school year winds down and we muddle toward a summer that may contain more of our traditional activities like tennis and eco camps, my mind often wanders toward next August. That is the time when, theoretically, all my children will be in full-time school for the first time.
What an immense change that will be. Not only after this last twelve months or more of forced togetherness, but after almost a decade in which I have been a full-time parent and part-time everything else.
There will be a great deal of change to reckon with, but some things will be familiar. Fingers crossed, I have many full years of emptying sand out of shoes still ahead of me. It’s probably about time I got a better broom.
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