Hello friends! For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the C3 Studio Administrator and Youth Coordinator. I also coach youth and adult circus classes. I’m a performer, student, partner, and parent. Today, I’m writing as a fellow community member and circus parent.

As we draw close to marking a year that this global pandemic has hit our community, I’ve been reflecting on the ways my life as a parent has been drastically altered. There are the obvious ways like the overwhelming amount of time we had together to teaching—my now 3 year old—a whole new set of skills like mask wearing & the importance of not touching literally everything. But, there have been some deeply difficult times of change that will likely never leave me.

I feel privileged to be a part of this community, and I missed being at C3 with the community during the shutdown this past spring. I missed all of my students greatly, but I had a special connection and ache for my toddler families and students. Toddlers are developmentally in this magical place where the world is starting to be real for them. They remember places and things with surprising accuracy. They are learning and growing at a remarkable pace. While I love teaching them and parenting one, this pandemic time has so far had it’s fair share of peaks and valleys.

Dean, my then two- year old used to spend a large number of hours a week at C3 due to the fact that all three members of our family were students and it is and was where I work. When Covid became our present reality, I thought I might get away with not having to do much explaining to him because of his age. Of course, I was also living in my own denial, thinking this would be over in two or three weeks. But, in typical Dean fashion, he brought reality to the fore and wouldn’t let me look away. It was Saturday. Normally I’m at C3 teaching, and Daddy and Dean take class, go get bagels, and pick me up after nap. It was Saturday, and we were all home. So naturally, I was trying to act like nothing was amiss. Dean says “Why aren’t we at the circus?” Oh, my heart. What do I say? There’s always this painful inner monologue of how much do I tell him? I don’t want to overburden him, but I feel compelled to be honest with him. It feels heavy. I pull him into my lap and explain that there is a sickness going around. A lot of people are sick, and the circus wants to do its part to keep people safe. I say “The circus building is closed right now, but we are still a circus.” And in typical toddler fashion, this conversation circles a few times through the exact same words as he processes what I’ve said. Then he hops down to go back to playing, seemingly unbothered. Every time after that when I needed to explain something closing, or why we were all at home, or any of the other countless changes, I had the “sickness” frame ready to go. I was feeling pretty good. It felt like such an easy answer!

Some amount of time passes, and Dean and I are walking in a park. I have no clue when this actually is, but it is after social distancing became the norm and before mask-wearing became mandatory. As we were walking up a hill, we saw a few kids from the same household with a toy rocket. They were chatting and touching. Chasing and tagging. Laughing and running.

They were just being children together.

I could feel the ache. My only child is an innately social creature. This mama’s heart has been worried about what long term side effects this isolation from other kids will do to him. I desperately want him to have that. In my moment of longing, Dean has taken off running. He is much closer than six feet to those kids. I felt the panic and fear for his safety, for intruding on someone else’s space, bubble up in my throat as I ran after him and pulled him away. All the while he’s fighting me, kicking and screaming “No, Mama!”. After I’ve put a good amount of distance between us and everyone else, we sit down on the grass side by side. He won’t look at me. He was pouting and angry. In his mind, I just told him he wasn’t allowed to play. He wasn’t allowed to make friends. And in a way, he was right. At that moment I felt so much shame. I felt I was telling my child not to be who he is. I took something at the core of his little person and told him not to be that anymore. Once he would look at me, I told him I was sorry. I told him that the sickness has gotten worse and now we can’t be close to people who don’t live in our house. He didn’t get it that day, but did eventually stop being mad at me. And if I’m honest, I never want that to feel normal to him.

I will never forget sitting on top of Peter’s Hill, the sky grey, and seeing the wind blow through his blonde curls. I’ll never forget the way his back was slumped, his furrowed brow, or pouty lip. I’ll never forget feeling like I betrayed him.

In the months that have passed since, I have returned to work while my partner parented and worked full time. Dean was able to attend pre-k in the fall and has made friends. He has made so much of this that still sometimes feels so abnormal to us adults a part of his everyday life. It’s all become so normal that he asked us why people in a movie weren’t wearing masks. I’ve accepted that he might not remember a time that he didn’t have to wear a mask by the time this pandemic is behind us. But something that has made that knowledge easier is knowing that every other child he knows has been experiencing the same reality. They will all have gone through this together.

When Halloween rolled around, there was so much uncertainty about what to do. Is it safe to go out? Will anyone even be passing out candy if we do go? But, my child had missed so much this year. He was so isolated for so long. He was just getting comfortable at school and learning how to navigate his new relationships without us. His birthday (in July) was a particularly hard day for me. I so desperately wanted him to have a day full of the people he loved, but it ended up much like the other endless days of this past summer except with cake. He was ecstatic, but it hurt so much to not be able to give him the day I hoped he could have. He didn’t know what he was missing. But I did. The year had just felt so hard and like I needed just one thing to feel normal. So, we poured every anxiety and disappointment we had into a homemade costume, and decided we would just go for a walk around the block. We purchased a bag of candy so we could give him a piece at every house, hoping it might feel like trick-or-treating. What I found that night overwhelmed me. House after house and street after street had adapted to give something normal to my child. People made shoots to send candy down from windows and to keep distance. Neighbors hid candy in their yard for kids to find. People who were out kept their distance and were masked. What I found was a community that came together and gave my child something amazing. They gave him a night of normal. I was overwhelmed by emotion and gratitude. It wasn’t just that people had adapted candy delivery. It was the choices that every person made gave my family this gift. It’s the people who created socially distant trick-or-treating, the people who stayed home, it’s the people who did something special in their pod or did a costume parade. It took the small decisions of every member of my neighborhood to give me and my child this incredible gift.

After some distance I’ve learned to look at that day in the spring on Peter’s Hill with a different lens. I’ve learned how to teach him to be social without being physically close and the importance of mask wearing. I’ve forgiven myself for protecting my child and trying to prevent the spread of a disease he still can’t really fathom. We’ve learned ways to cope with his big feelings, and I try to remember that this is a collective trauma that no one will come away from without invisible wounds. That this is the only life he will know, and no matter how it feels to me, it will in some way feel normal to him.

Back at the end of May, I was desperately trying to get him to practice his balance bike. The sun is shining, and it truly looks and feels like spring. So, we went to a coffee shop for a muffin as an incentive to actually get on his bike. As he’s picking out his muffin, in walks Sophia, his “favorite teacher”. He starts to run over for a hug, but stops short. He’s bouncing with excitement as he chats with her about muffins, and bikes, and what she’s doing. Engaging with someone he’d call a friend with an appropriate physical distance. This is a super weird and challenging time to say the least, but it turns out – even with six feet of space between us, we can still be a circus and community together.