Color-Coded Schedules and Curious Monkeys

I went into quarantine-school strong. Sure, I dropped the initial cathartic f-bomb when I learned school would be closed months, but then I pivoted quickly. Armed with years of solid teaching experience, some okayish classroom management (never was my thing), and a pretty good grasp on what Beckett needed to know before kindergarten. Let’s call it what it was...smug.

Just look at that color-coded schedule. Whole-child, am I right?

Here we are 8 weeks into this nonsense, and let’s just say that schedule isn’t curling at the edges because I’ve been referring to it so much. It hasn’t been touched since week two, and I’m okay with that.

None of us have been through this before, and the schedule stopped feeling right. Most days are truly just this constant dance of figuring out what the next best thing is for us to do. Where are we on screen time? It’s time for something creative. Whoa, the energy level in this house is untenable. It’s time for a scooter ride around the block. How many bowls of pretzels has he eaten today? Snack #8 should probably be an apple. Pajamas all day again? Sure, why not?

Through this uncharted experience, I’m reminded of the Reys, the authors of Curious George. I learned through Louise Borden’s children’s book The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margaret and H.A. Rey, that these German-born Jews escaped Paris on a homemade bicycle two days before Paris fell to the Third Reich. They escaped via Spain, Portugal, and Brazil with nothing but their travel papers, the money the bank would let them withdraw, and a manuscript for a children’s book about a monkey. They landed in the United States, where they lived out their lives as trail-blazing children’s book writers.

We are living through pretty darn scary times. Let’s remember that we are doing the best we can, perhaps just the next right thing. The Reys were plucked out of their romantic lives as writers and artists in Paris. They emerged from a hellish experience with a book about a monkey. Perhaps if we just resign to the chaos and do our absolute best to stay safe, we’ll end up with our own versions of homemade bicycles and revolutionary manuscripts.