My Pandemic Baby is Starting School
Will separation feel different for us?
My littlest starts school in a few weeks and I’ve spent the summer low-key worrying about her and how she’ll manage the transition. At first I worried because she did not speak English, but after a few weeks with my in-laws she has made the leap to bilingualism. Now she holds her own in negotiations over toys and turns with her cousins. I admire her tenacity, but I still worry. Now it’s about how she’ll experience separation. All signs point to her resilience but worry has been a part of our relationship from the beginning. I wonder if it is the same for other parents of pandemic babies. I hate this term, how it links the child to the catastrophe as if it is a part of them, but I haven’t found a better one that screams out the truth that it was different for us.
I was entering my third trimester in March of 2020. I’m sure you also have some core memories of when it first hit for you. Like how my parents’ generation all seem to remember where they were when Kennedy was shot. I was on a trip to Target to buy chicken stock for a favorite meatball recipe. “Can you check to see if we need anything else?” I texted my husband, stepping into the store. “Nevermind. Shelves empty.”
It is a memory I had put away. Memories of that time have come back to me in unexpected flashes this summer, at least in part because I immersed myself in Kate Zambreno’s The Light Room. Many of them also as I write about my littlest and what it feels like to grow apart.
After the chicken stock incident, we left Brooklyn for my parents’ house in the suburbs of New Jersey. Days turned into months. We slept in my purple bedroom, sharing my bed with our 3 year old daughter and my stuffed polar bear. Eventually, we replaced the full bed with a king from IKEA. There would be four of us sleeping in it once the baby was born.
My prenatal appointments moved to zoom. I ordered a blood pressure cuff online and learned to palpate my growing belly to find my baby’s head–it will feel like an orange–to confirm she was in position. A few months of this, then we drove into Brooklyn for the birth. All four grandparents in isolation and on alert for the day when our bubbles could merge.
I rented a birth pool from a friend and set up all the supplies on our dining table. A plastic shower curtain. Old towels and sheets. A hypodermic syringe. Latex gloves. Lavender and peppermint oils. The stone and comb I squeezed to get through the contractions my first time around. Medical supplies laid out next to herbs, tinctures, and talismans that felt personal though many of them came as part of the birth kit I ordered online.
My mother slept in bed with my eldest while I birthed our baby in the living room in a pool her sister had filled. The birth was as magical as any described by Ina May, down to the glow of the salt lamp and the intensity of emotion. I rarely share the story in full detail because I’d roll my own eyes. It was exactly as I had fantasized, save for the midwife’s full PPE.
Another memory: At some point in the next year our babysitter returned to watch the girls for a few hours while we tried to work. The baby would crawl from room to room crying as she searched for me, something her sister had never done. Three adults and two children in an apartment and the best we could do was try to distract the kids long enough that someone could get dinner on the table before the sitter’s three hours were up. I can’t think when my children are crying, even when I force myself to stay away.
As a preschool teacher I always told parents to leave once they had said goodbye. Even if the child is crying, you have to follow through. This is how trust is built. I don’t have a better alternative. I understand why it helps. But as a parent, it sucks. The director of the preschool would wander the hallways and offer parents hugs and reassurance. There were no hugs for us when we dropped my eldest off at school for the first time.
September of 2021. We left her at the side door, greeted by her teacher’s embrace, guided into a classroom we would not yet see full of life and children, in a school we would enter only a few times that year. A freefall. A leap of faith. Faith that they would care for her. Faith that she could care for herself. Hope that a fabric mask, damp from her tears in those first weeks, would stay in place and keep the virus out so she could play with blocks and make some friends.
Unsurprisingly, the baby seemed to possess an exceptional awareness of who was family and who was not. Family had faces. Everyone else was other. Everyone else presented risk. I am sure she could sense our ambivalence in the way we stood apart, kept others at a distance even when we craved their touch. The baby would smile at the other parents dropping off their preschoolers, their eyes peeking out behind a rainbow of masks, then bury her face in my chest when they made eye contact and ask to nurse.
In my class on infant development my graduate students discussed why it is important for babies to feel the world is safe. Safe to explore. Safe to learn about. Safe to venture out towards. The students wondered out loud about the pandemic babies. Would it be enough that they feel safe at home? Yes, I assured them. So long as she feels safe in my arms she will be ok.
Siblings are different from each other. My brother and I share ambition and drive. We can make each other laugh with a half sentence. The other knows the punchline before it’s out. We come to one another for advice and yet we find each other confusing, even unknowable.
My eldest entered the world quickly and greeted it with open arms. Even when held close she was always peering outward, seeking others, smiling at strangers and family alike. Maybe my youngest would have been more cautious regardless of circumstance. Maybe she would have still been ready to defend, to fight for what she needs and wants. Maybe her scream would still have been piercing. Maybe it would have still been hard for us to be apart.
I wrote that last part in June. Now it is August. It all still rings true except for the last line. It hasn’t been hard for her to be apart.
At the end of the school year, she followed her sister into her classroom and stayed. All summer she has gone off on adventures with grandparents, cousins familiar and new to her, and returned happy to reunite with us but clearly without need of rescuing or even refueling. She plays collaboratively and can ask for what she needs. My littlest is not as vulnerable as she once seemed. She is smart and knows herself. If she is going with someone it is because she wants to. It isn’t my child who is afraid of separating. It is me.
In Linea Nigra, Jazmina Barrera writes about a documentary she watched that explains how the part of the brain that is “directly related to fear is switched on during child rearing and remains that way through the rest of the parent’s life. There is no way to turn it off.” It is hardly the most poignant moment in her essay, but I’ve marked the page. Fear, it seems, is always a part of parenthood. It is more a part of me than it is of her.
My littlest is ready for school and I am scared.
Find me elsewhere…
If you are not yet following along on Instagram, consider this your invitation. @parentpueblo is where I share more food for thought, advice, and updates. This week we’re talking about culture and school. Check out Monday’s post below.
More writing…
Some of pieces for other publications from spring & summer:
The Impact of Barbie on Me as a Brown Latina versus as a Mom for HipLatina
In Defense of Simplifying Summer for The Everymom
Where Do You Feel a Cultural Belonging? for Cup of Jo
Plus what I love about living in Brooklyn. Also for Cup of Jo
What’s on your mind heading into fall? Let me know below. I love to hear from you.