Coronavirus: Bay Area families find the silver lining in home confinement
Families may face an uncertain future as they shelter in place, but they’re enjoying time together in ways not normally allowed by their over-scheduled lives.
Not that long ago, days for Kate Lee-Leidy and her two kids rushed by in a flurry of routine tasks and general busyness.
Lee-Leidy needed to get Jackie, 9, and Babe, 8, to school by 8:15 a.m., then catch BART for her tech job in Oakland. After school, there was baseball practice, tennis lessons and homework. Some nights, Lee-Leidy, Jackie and Babe wouldn’t get home until after dinner, with homework still ahead, plus lunches to pack and work to prep for.
That busyness came to a halt Monday, with schools closing for the foreseeable future and a stay-at-home order to halt the spread of coronavirus in the Bay Area.
The world for Lee-Leidy and her children suddenly shrank to their two-bedroom Lafayette apartment — with no patio. Lee-Leidy, who shares custody with her ex-husband, certainly worries about work, keeping the kids from getting sad or bored, and overseeing their remote classwork. If schools remain closed for the rest of the year, she worries about cabin fever and an uncertain future
But Lee-Leidy said they now have hours that aren’t booked with things to do and places to go. There’s a lot of togetherness — and that’s actually nice.
“It’s not often that after dinner, we’d do a slow walk around the neighborhood,” Lee-Leidy said on Tuesday. “We did that last night. We’re also having conversations we might not have had time for before. My daughter and I stayed up for 30 minutes last night, lying in bed, talking about the galaxies and the universe.”
In the first week of lockdowns for a historic global pandemic, families are struggling to adjust to a new reality. Parents have to play the role of teacher, a job they have no training for. They’re also trying to manage their own anxiety, while their kids, generally pretty social creatures, are cut off from friends.
But like Lee-Leidy, many families are trying to find the proverbial silver lining in this national crisis. Parents interviewed said their families are enjoying time together in ways that are often elusive in the Bay Area, a region known for residents with over-scheduled lives.
“This whole thing is terrible,” said Rachel Estrella, of Oakland, about the pandemic that’s sent her 15-year-old son Kai and 10-year-old daughter Bailey home from school and ended their beloved but demanding schedule of choir and violin practices.
“At the same time, the pace of our lives had become overly frenetic,” said Estrella, who is working from home for a research and evaluation firm. “The kids were feeling overwhelmed by the pace, their parents’ work lives, the requirements of school. We have all felt like we did not have enough time to, as my son would put it, ‘just chill together as a family.’ While (this is) having so many negative impacts, it’s also forcing everyone to slow down.”
