This week’s post is a little (a LOT) late because the nature of working single-parent pandemic life involves dropping just about everything when your kid finds themselves struggling under a heavy workload and you have deadlines that actually earn money. I’ve been keeping up with the news while elbow-deep in subject-verb agreement and addition with regrouping, however. It’s been quite a rollercoaster of emotions. First, we crossed the thousand-mark for daily COVID caseloads (more than once, in fact). Then we got word that the WHO has approved the Pfizer vaccine for use in 5-11 year-olds. The fact that my needle-averse 8-year-old did a dance at the latter bit of news should tell you everything you need to know where this household stands on the matter. All of a sudden, I felt like life might actually make sense again in the foreseeable future.

…Maybe.

I won’t dwell on why the government that previously said it had “not been standing still on this issue” is now saying they need time to liaise with stakeholders to figure out the rollout… particularly with a deadline for the return to physical school for this cohort already set. I will, however, dwell on is the way the public sector not-a-mandate seems to have quietly fizzled at the same time that the Ministry of Education has reaffirmed its commitment to bringing the lower Forms and Standard 5s back out to school early next month.

There’s also no discussion I can see of expanding the existing school vaccination mandate to include the COVID vaccines, despite the fact that, as far as this laywoman can see, we’re literally talking about adding COVID-19 to the list of communicable diseases at the end of this six-page piece of legislation. It’s not like there isn’t a precedent for enforcing this mandate in the face of misinformation, nor would we be the first in the region or world to do it. This leaves me wondering whether our leaders are really ok with letting this pandemic drag on and cause more avoidable deaths if it means they won’t have to face the inevitable backlash of doing what’s necessary to bring it to an end as soon as possible.

While they figure themselves out, parents remain trapped between the proverbial rock and hard place. I am fortunate to have the privilege of working from home in order to be here for my daughter. What that means in practice is that I spend my days trying to tune out the natural chaos of a primary school digital classroom while tuning in just enough to ensure I’m not missing anything that requires my attention, while trying to focus on the job that keeps the internet bill paid. (As an example, it took me six or seven interruptions relating to food, help with an assignment and connectivity issues to make it this far into this blog post.) Then I get to support my daughter through the lengthy assignments that follow four hours of screen-time, ensuring that she’s completed everything and scanning them for upload. All while managing deadlines, meetings and trying to carve out a sliver of the time, energy and brain matter I need to craft coherent copy.

While I’m good at what I do, I won’t pretend I’m performing at my best productivity level right now. Nor will I pretend that this attempt to cleave myself in half is sustainable. It’s not. And my daughter and I are a pair of the lucky ones. A fair number of her classmates clearly have no meaningful adult supervision during class and, based on overheard comments, it’s clear a good few of them aren’t turning in any work. The bottom line is that these children need to be back in physical school for a whole host of reasons that have been repeated ad nauseum. I want my daughter back in school, socialising with her peers and learning from her teachers and I want the luxury of focusing on the day’s work during working hours so I can focus on her when she returns home. Also, plain talk bad manners, I’m just tired of hearing allyuh chirren in meh kitchen. Truly.

However, I do not want to have to send her into an environment where she has to mingle with unvaccinated children and teachers who will inevitably expose her to a virus that is still mutating and can have long-term impacts on her health. Given that the alternative is figuring out how to homeschool her on top of earning a living, it’s looking like I don’t have much of a choice. Particularly in an environment where one group’s perceptions about their rights appear to supersede the rights of everyone around them.

And so, here we are, just over six weeks away from the two-year anniversary of the day schools closed, preparing to reopen them without doing the obvious and basic things required to make them safe spaces for our children. As tired as I am of the perpetual pandemic life, I find myself wondering if this move is less a light at the end of the tunnel than a train barreling through it.