Back to School

Hello again and thank you for your patience over the last four months. It has been a whirlwind of a summer for me. Our house addition began on July 5th and is nearly complete but for a glass shower door, a couple fixtures and a new garage door. The old garage door got blown out when the tow truck to pick up the overflowing construction dumpster accidentally knocked it down our driveway instead. Bump, bump, bump it went down the set of wood supports it was resting on, then THUMP, smack into the house.

They say there’s always a ‘hiccup’ or two with big projects like this so we’re just relieved that the damage wasn’t greater. On the work front, in June, 8 of my team members in Latin America were let go and I am now helping to onboard 8 new team members in Manila. If anyone asks, I look forward to this new chapter. Bump, bump, bump, THUMP.

Happily, the kids are back to in school full-time this year and my youngest has transitioned speedily to the Kindergarten routine. We were lucky that we didn’t have a school bus driver shortage like some other districts in the area (!) and so far the COVID cases have been isolated and not required either of my girls to quarantine at home.

However, it’s happened more than once that we’re feeling like good parents, waiting on time and prepared as the school bus pulls up only to see the masked faces through the bus windows as it approaches. “Your mask! Your mask!” – sudden panic as we run headlong into the house at the last minute.

I was happy to find a “Back to School 1914” picture from my grandmother’s album. My grandmother appears dressed up just like the rest so I’m not sure if they had some kind of pre-k program or something? The girl in the middle, Isabel Mapes, was a neighbor whose father (William J) would die almost exactly 3 years after this picture on September 7, 1917.

William J. Mapes, aged 54 years 10 months and 2 days, who had been a resident of this city for the past 11 years, died at his home on South Benton Avenue on Thursday, after an illness of a long duration from a complication of diseases.

Mr. Mapes was born in Great __, PA, on November 5, 1863, a son of Isaac Mapes and Sarah ___. About 11 years ago he moved to this city, where he has since resided. In 1895, he was united in marriage to Margaret St. John at Monticello, in Sullivan County. To this union was born one daughter, Mary Isabelle Mapes and one son, Frederick St. John. One brother, J.C. Mapes, of Elmira, also survives. Mrs. Mapes preceded the deceased in death several years ago.

In 1923, Isabel and her brother moved to Schenectady, NY but I’m afraid I couldn’t trace them after that. Sometimes you reach a dead end in the ancestry searches and you have to accept that the thread will just have to dangle there. I think this crazy summer has taught me something about the need to accept dangling threads (and dangling garage doors).

Until pretty recently, maybe the start of the pandemic, I really felt that with enough effort and energy, I could “design my life”, so to speak. I was extremely fortunate that no great illness, no great limitation or calamity jiggled my life so much that I didn’t feel like the person driving my fate. I’m not sure that I see it the same way now, and the renovation accentuated that feeling.

In order to put the bathroom in upstairs, the plumbers had to rip open the downstairs bathroom and put new piping in there. For months, the sheetrock from the ceiling and the side of the bathroom were torn out and we would have a view of the PVC pipes and the inner workings of the exhaust fan and bathroom light every time we used the bathroom. From a contractor’s view, it’s no big deal. As a homeowner, it’s so unsettling though.

You think, “this is my unattractive but sturdy bathroom”. It has walls, it has a ledge here where I clean the dust, and the tiles go from here to here. Then, in one day, suddenly the whole thing is covered in dust and the tiles have been ripped off and what you thought was your bathroom is really just a bunch of inner workings covered over with sheetrock.

So this is sort of what I feel like COVID did to my conception of school, and what the recent layoffs did to my conception of my work, and what the slow reckoning of this 1.5 years working from home has done to every aspect of my life. Like “huh. There’s all this machinery back there and it has to work right or…”

Which is not to say it’s all bad, right? Because I think that getting accustomed to seeing the blood and guts of life can maybe make you a better surgeon, you know?

In my case, I did a Facebook-ectomy. I deleted my account, effective October 16th, and I’m happy I did. I had tried to use the platform to be a good friend to people and to reach out to acquaintances who seemed to need help but I would get, “that’s so sweet! Thanks for reaching out”. People weren’t asking for a friend, really, or at least not the way I think of friendship.

If I only have a limited time in this world, I want to spend it communicating in a way that feels authentic to me. I can “like” and “heart” people’s photos for an hour or I can invite my Kindergartener to read books with me. What will make me happier? Which gesture will mean anything 10 or 20 years on?

Sorry if the touchy-feeliness of this post was too much for you. It’s really hard going back to writing after such a long absence and I guess I had more pent-up emotions than I realized. Good thing I wasn’t 2 months into a Word War with three little kids in tow, right Eleanor?

Here’s a nice picture of impish Marjorie on the front porch. Big hug to you all.