Page 16 - FDCC Pandemic Book

Living in a Pandemic: A Collection of Stories on Coping, Resilience & Hope
kings. Stuck at home, I struggled to find the physical and emotional energy to be both a parent and a lawyer in the ways required of me. In truth, I utterly lacked fulfillment.
Adam is (and will be) an only child and deserves someone to pay attention to him, play with him, and nurture his development. My clients and firm deserve my best work and full attention as well. Given that most of my clients are on the east coast, the schedule Tom and I created quickly strained my ability to communicate effectively. Not to mention that any attempt at productivity from our guest room was thwarted by constant pop-ins from a toddler who can sniff me out from a hundred yards. With Arizona’s temperature climbing to the hottest summer on record, Tom could not work in the sweltering afternoon sun either. We needed reinforcements. Working this way wasn’t working.
After a strict two-week quarantine (from which we haven’t emerged) we were able to join households with my parents. They graciously agreed to watch Adam in the mornings while I worked from their secluded upstairs office. Tom worked until 2:00 and then picked up Adam on his way home. I recognize this safety net is not available to everyone; not a day goes by I don’t fall to my knees with gratitude. If it hadn’t been for my parents’ willingness to help out, someone would have needed to leave the workforce – an option I know over 800,000 women were forced to accept in 2020. If that happened, finances would not be the only element to suffer.
Even with help from my parents, there are days where Adam gets too much screen time. Or too much sugar. Or too little sleep. None of us is professionally trained in early childhood development and I keep reminding my mom to cut herself some slack. She and my dad already raised their three children and are agreeing, in their “golden years”, to do it again. These are hard days for everyone. There are screams, tears, and “time-ins” where there used to be business suits, team meetings, and room service.
But, fortunately, we all take comfort in knowing that Adam is surrounded by people who love him and who are doing everything in their power to keep him safe. He may not be learning how to count to ten in Navajo (which he had been learning in day care), but he learned how to swim laps on his own, he has the most advanced vocabulary of any three-year-old I’ve ever known, and takes a picnic walk with his Pops every day. He wakes up from his nap to the soft snuggle of his mom’s cheek, has family lunches around the kitchen table from my childhood, and gets to play outside... in the mud, of course. If this time in quarantine taught me anything about parenting it is this: don’t sweat the small stuff and be grateful for the big stuff.
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