Yes. I am going to cut my own hair.

Let me back up. I read this article in the New York Times about stylist Jayne Matthews. It was fun and interesting. I followed her on Instagram. I found myself pining for a haircut like this. Funky, fun, playful. I have wavy hair and she talks about helping girls with thin wavy hair shape it, reduce frizz, frame the face. This is what I need! I love her ethos about wash and wear and respecting a hair’s natural style.

I haven’t had a haircut I like in Brazil yet. I’m busy, I don’t live in the hip neighborhood, and the list of excuses goes on. Right before quarantine, I got the name of someone, but that obviously never happened. In general, I find that the assumption in Brazil is blowouts or serious levels of work each morning. Ha. That’s not me. 3 kids, a teaching job that start at 8:00. Nope. I’ve had a hard time finding someone who understood my personality and my desires. Not that they don’t exist, I just hadn’t found yet.

Cut to a few weeks ago. Jayne announces she’s doing video call haircut and bang trim tutorials. I knew right away I wanted to do it. I ordered the feather razor she recommends and a nice comb. I booked a slot. I am going to be video coached through cutting my own hair.

I probably wouldn’t have done this before quarantine. But no one really sees me, I have nothing to lose, and this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I don’t think stylists really offered video call self-haircut tutorials before this. Let’s hope this opportunity never presents itself again! So, here we go. I will video it and take before and after photos, of course. I feel positive and confident. I’ve gotten into such a rut with my hair. I just whip it into a ponytail and make videos. I’m bored. I’m tired of having long hair just so I can pull it into a ponytail.

I also need some diversion. This feels like an authentically real experience and I haven’t had many of those in a few weeks. Honestly, if you asked me about the past few weeks, what I remember is playing the mandolin more, teaching Matilda to ride a bike, and this! This has given me energy and hope. I seriously can’t wait.

I will write a post in the coming days with the results. In the meantime, I hope you all find something exhilarating to look forward to. What do you have to lose? The bigger question is, did you ever have something to lose?

Before photos:

I wasn’t sure what would crack me, but it was hot water.

Let me back up. Yesterday, as we were running the kids’ bath, the hot water shut off. We had enough for their bath, but we spent the evening playing around with the water heater. E4 was on the panel, which a Google search revealed meant faulty sensors. More searching hinted that that meant some major repairs were needed.

We had what looked like two leaky toilets, and one that was also leaking from the bottom–ew. Now we had a broken water heater. Oh, and there are dry wood termites in one bathroom cabinet. In the new apartment we moved into 10 days ago. During the coronavirus lock down.

I seriously started to plan in my head for having to boil water to make hot baths. We put in a maintenance request with our school’s HR who helps with these kinds of things. But my hopes were low. Who would be willing to come do the service? Should I break some social distancing rules for this?

Right away this morning, I got an email from the woman in HR who mainly handles issues like this for foreign hires. She was sending over the maintenance man from school. She asked me to take a picture of the water heater, and then I was bummed to learn their technician doesn’t fix that brand.

But, the school handyman was coming, and he would at least take a look. He is the nicest, most versatile guy on the planet. He can fix anything, like an angel with a multi-tool. He came over and I walked him through the leaking toilets. Turns out that it’s probably just bad plaster work, and not active leaks. He said he would try to tighten the toilet to the floor to prevent that leaking. He took a look at the termites and said that probably the best idea was a new cabinet. As for the water heater, he messaged a friend who knows the brand. The friend messaged back that the electrical panel needed to be replaced.

My worry was growing, but I didn’t really notice it. How can you notice one worry among so many right now? But I got a text an hour later from HR that she was going to contact the real estate company that worked with the landlady. It would obviously be their job to fix the water heater.

Then another text that a technician was coming at 2 pm! He arrived early and traded out the panel. Voila, hot water! He told me to go to the bathroom and turn the shower on full blast hot to check it. It was so hot and steamy. I will confess I have not had a shower in at least 2 days. As steam filled the room, I started crying.

This is such a hard time. I feel so lucky to have a job, to have an HR team to support me, colleagues to video call with, technicians willing to come in and let me give them a wide berth. I didn’t realize how much this was all building up.

I sat down at my desk, and I heard Calvin in the next room having a Zoom call with his teacher. “Distance learning is now fun. I miss school so much,” he said. Then I started crying more. Oh man. I’m grateful for everything we have to help us, but I wish this wasn’t happening.

I love the Marge Piercy poem “To Be of Use”

In all of this lockdown quarantine life, I am left feeling stir crazy. I am busy. I channel my energy, which is very high, into work. It’s why I love teaching. My energy is called on. Long ago when we were still in school (has it been a week? two? a millenia?) someone saw me at the photocopier at 7:57 and said, “Whoa, you have way too much energy for before 8 am.”

I’d been up since 5 am that day. Making hay while the sun shines–figuratively because it was dark in my apartment as I did some creative work of my own in the silence of my apartment.

That’s just me. That’s who I am. My 9th grade history teacher, a pretty wretched woman if you ask me, kept asking me all year if I’d been “tested.” Wink, wink. ADD. Hyperactive. I do not have ADHD, I am just wired to burn one click below a supernova. I exaggerate.

So, I chose a profession that keeps me busy, that wants and needs and appreciates my 8 am energy.

Being a work-at-home homeschooler is NOT what I was built for. I need to be doing stuff, and not just banging away at my keyboard. I need to be moving, creating, interacting.

So, when I got a frantic text from an American friend in her condo that they were being flown back and had 3 hours to pack, I switched on. Instead of my energy being sent as rage at the throw pillows that my kids keep throwing on the floors, or the dirty socks they hide behind furniture, I could do something. I went straight to her apartment and asked how I could help. Sometimes people say they don’t need help and you aren’t sure what to do. But there were real things I could do.

In addition to adopting Chester the bunny, I started taking pictures of all her furniture. She had hoped to have time to post things and sell them. Now, she was packing a few suitcases and leaving it all behind.

I started a list. I pulled things out of closets and piled things up. We cleaned out kitchen cabinets. We stacked up library books that needed to be returned.

Here was a way to be of use. To move stuff, to think, to move, to talk. I made a spreadsheet, set prices. I sent out items. I helped friends carry their purchased furniture to their apartments. We bagged up garbage and recycling. We bagged up clothing donations.

There are many hard things about social distancing, lock down, quarantine. One of the hardest is not being able to venture out into the world and move stuff and make myself useful. It doesn’t feel the same to send a kid a video or type a comment, as when I sit next to them with their writing and provide feedback. It’s not the same to answer an email as it is to point at a raised hand.

I considered being a doctor in college. Took all my premed classes during the first year. I think about the parallel life where I was a doctor now. Now that would give me a sense of usefulness. And it doesn’t scare me to imagine working in healthcare right now. I think I’d savor it.

So what happens after that is done? Should I ask the gardeners if I can help mow the lawn? Paint our bedrooms? I need to find tiny ways to be useful, to move things forward in some way, in some tangible, physical way.

[Y’all, I’m wiped out. I just made 2 videos and updated links and made Flipgrids, so I had no time to even re-read this. Forgive any typos or thoughts that went a-wandering.]

A coworker and friend used the “s*** or get off the pot” metaphor to think about our current situation. The State department sent out an email to Americans living abroad. The message was that you should not do any optional travel, but you should hunker down where you are or return to the US. There’s talk that the borders might get sealed.

Families were left with a choice. We can still do our online teaching as long as we have internet, but some are choosing to do this from the US.

It’s such an uncertain time and I’m asking questions every day that I’d never considered. My instinct kept telling me to stay. We have an apartment, a community. We live in a beautiful condo complex with wide open spaces for outdoor play and a trail for hiking and pretending we live in the Atlantic rainforest.

In the US, we’d have to crash with family or go to the condo we use in Minnesota, but we’d have to rent a car and figure life out there. We have family, but no friends. Where will things be worse. Brazil is still under 1000 cases (probably not for long) but the US (as I write this) is at 21,000+ cases. So, right now, it’s better here. Where is it better? I don’t know. No one can know.

And what does this mean for our home leave next summer? Great question. No one knows. We have plane tickets to the US in June. Will we be on that plane? I don’t know. There’s a scenario where we don’t leave Brazil this June/July.

We are choosing to fish instead of cut bait.

It’s okay. I’m feeling okay with that gamble. I have a family that is healthy. I have a job. We are okay. And, for whatever reason, here feels better. There’s a sense of solidarity. I can’t really explain it. About half the teacher families left, about half stayed. I think and hope we will all be okay.

We are staying.

Am I overwhelmed. Hell f-ing yes. I keep asking what happens when starvation spreads through Brazil and the US. When all of the hourly workers living paycheck to paycheck now have no paycheck and no food. Seriously, what happens to all those kids?

I know that I speak for a lot of educators when I tell you that we are all thinking about the kids. We give kids a safe place with food every day. When we are closed…what then, for them? Consider that seriously.

I think of those photos of the Great Depression. 25% unemployment. Families abandoning children because they couldn’t feed them. Those stories haunt me.

I also really love our life and I’m clinging to it. I want to hold on to all this as much as I can. Not that people who left don’t. I know that we all have our situations–newborn babies, elderly parents, social isolation.

I’m grateful for David and these three crazy kids, because at least we have each other. If I was alone in NYC like I was in my first year of teaching, this would be a really hard time. I’m grateful for this crazy big family of mine.

I just want the time machine so I can jump ahead 3 months, see that everything is okay and come back. We keep facing situations every day that we didn’t see coming the day before.

A family in our condo who aren’t teachers but sent their kids to Graded got the call that they were flying home tonight. They had 4 hours to pack. That’s it. They have an apartment full of furniture and belongings, and they had to pack whatever they could fit.

And they have a bunny. Chester. Matilda is obsessed with Chester. So, when the message went out that they needed to find a home for the bunny, I looked at David. We were thinking the same thing. We will take that bunny.

Meet Chester.

First off, all is well with me. I am in school today, my family is well. Anxiety and tension is high. Yesterday Brazil had 55 cases, today it’s over 150. A week and a half ago, we had under 5 cases. Every day is new and unexpected. My students keep asking for predictions, for answers. Let this be the first time they begin to learn this: your teachers don’t have all the answers.

As soon as the first case appeared in Brazil, my school started talking about possible futures. I appreciate how pro-active and clear they’ve been. Our communication as a school has been really good. A lot of daily emails, meetings multiple times a week to talk in person. It’s a lot, but I would prefer the over-communication over the alternative.

Last week, we started talking about what our teaching would look like if we had to go virtual. Our admin was in close communication with peer schools in China, Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. Our main goal became learning from them. They had no one to turn to for advice, but they could help us prepare.

I’m taking an online course about digital/virtual/online teaching. That’s been really helpful. We’re preparing students by getting them all signed up different web platforms: Zoom, Flipgrid, Padlet.

There’s no chaos or panic. And yet, I feel like I’m working an extra job. I’m teaching face to face, and then I’m learning how to teach digitally. And I feel like a first year teacher again. I don’t know how the tools work, I don’t know how much to assign, how to present it, how to collect and assess. I’m learning and stumbling in all normal ways, but I haven’t felt like this since I started teaching.

So the main feeling I have is exhaustion. I’m supporting my students through this as well as dealing with my own emotions. My brain has so many pots on the stove, they are all boiling over a bit. I’m forgetful of little details.

But to reframe it, maybe those little details weren’t essential. Moments like this teach you what really matters.

I have to say that I am sad about the possibility of virtual teaching. I love spending time with my students each day. I love the one-on-one moments. I love the way they crack me up. That is going to be mostly lost online. Yes, we will find ways to check in and connect, but I can’t pretend it will be the same.

And, by sheer coincidence, we are moving to a new apartment today. This began a month ago! We started the process in January and now here we are. So, I go home after an exhausting day to pack more of our stuff and mop the floors of the new place. Luckily it’s in the same building, so it’s just an elevator ride away.

Beyond all of that, if school is closed, then my own 3 children will be at home and learning virtually as well. While I’m trying to run and manage an online classroom. Are you feeling queasy yet?

Add that the potential reality that we can’t go to public spaces because of social distancing.

Oh sweet baby Jesus. This is gonna be a great story we tell in the future.

For now, continued gratitude for my job, for my health, for the support of David, and the love of those little mess-makers of mine. We are strong and smart and resilient.

As of now, I don’t know if or when the school will close, but my bet is that we close. I’ll update here with more news at that point. And if you’re interested, I’ll be recording some read alouds for my students of novels and putting them on YouTube. If anyone finds themselves in a similar situation and would find that helpful or beneficial, help yourself.