Brave and strong

The job that doesn't stop

Jun 02, 2020

They don’t tell you when you become a parent that maybe one day you’ll be up at three in the morning, reading about your country falling completely apart, and at eight am have to carry on reading Very Hungry Caterpillar the same way you did before the world was ending.

“MOOOOOOM? Can I have some breakfast? Can you bring it down to the basement while we play?” my 5 year old called this morning. My neck hurts from looking down at my phone so much. We heard some sort of explosions, who knows what from, down the street in Rogers Park overnight. I had been running through the people in my life to worry about first—my friend going through chemo for late stage lung cancer, the nurse going into work to change the hospital sheets because nobody can get down to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, my neighbor who is a SWAT officer whose kids are having nightmares.

But all that has to wait when there are waffles to warm up and milk to pour and a dog to keep from biting the kids even if they kind of asked for it.

I told the kids last week about Christian Cooper and George Floyd and the 2nd grader put his hands over his ears and tearfully asked me to stop. I ground my gears yesterday through a raging hangover (because I drank until I threw up on Sunday night, hoping deep down to negate my consciousness), worrying about how much to tell the kids about the news. I didn’t want to scare them. I don’t have answers or explanations. We don’t keep the TV on. But I felt guilty about protecting their innocence when many parents don’t have a choice. Meanwhile it’s the last week of school and there are ‘celebrations’ planned. I cried watching the video of our school principal leading a prayer for peace and kindness. I feel so bad and jealous of the kids who are being kids right now.

Finally last night on our evening walk, I told our older son about the peaceful protest directly in our home town. He didn’t seem to react to it but I felt that sense of “OK, well, we have started this conversation, at least.” At home, my husband showed me a photo of the Uptown protests in Chicago and my son wanted to see, and I told my husband to show him. My kid has been very literal in following the rules of quarantine and I expected him to object to people turning out in crowds despite “the virus.” Instead, he said, “Mommy, those people are brave and strong.”

Too bad that’s not the end of the story. It was a reassuring end to a trying day, parenting-wise, but that doesn’t change the news nor the fact that we still have to parent our way through this. My five year old, meanwhile, was a noteworthy dick yesterday. My husband wondered what was up with him, and I said he can probably tell how anxious and stressed we are.

I just had to get up and get the kid an ice pack because he’s sobbing because he fell down on his Legos. And now they’re bothering the dog again.

This is how it is for us right now. Big fears and little jobs.

I have no advice. I didn’t look up any resources or talk to any experts for this issue. I thought about running something silly to get our minds off everything. I thought about no issue at all. I thought about rounding up ways to help your community and protesters. I overthought all of it because it’s easy to pretend this matters because some of you gave me $30 to do this newsletter and worrying about this is easier than worrying about the actual important things.

Parenting grinds on and we still have to get the ice packs and heat up the waffles and read bedtime stories even when we hear explosions in the background and when we are crying. If you have any advice on how we can all be brave and strong, please let me know. Good luck. Take care of yourselves. And don’t drink until you throw up. It doesn’t help anything.

~Claire

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Thanks for reading Evil Witches, a newsletter for people who happen to be mothers. You can follow us on Instagram and on Twitter. You can also reply right to this email. If you do need some resources on how to help fight for justice, how to support black business owners, and how to educate yourself, I thought the Go Fug Yourself authors did a great job with this post.

I asked the other day about how some of you are talking to your young kids or not about current events.