It’s hard to believe that the terrible reign of COVID-19 started 6 years ago. The pandemic sometimes feels more like a world we went to than a time we lived through, and we don’t much like being reminded of that place or care to revisit it. Usually when the pandemic comes up in casual conversation, it’s all sighs and sentence fragments. We shake our heads and swiftly shift gears. It’s a lovely little trick of our human nature that we have trouble conjuring experiences of pain. But “the past is never dead. It isn’t even past,” William Faulkner once wrote. And whether we wish to speak any more of the pandemic or not, it continues, of course, to speak through us.

I’ve been separated from the father of my children for 6 years now. At this point separation has become old hat. Maybe too old hat cause I can’t really imagine myself in a relationship anymore. Sharing space with another adult? Being witnessed in my parenting? Trying to collaborate with them in parenting? Gah. Sounds like a lot. And a lot of relationships I see look like barely veiled co-dependence or simple inertia. Then there are the few that I do truly envy and admire. And I think how lucky for those folks. Because, though we don’t love to admit it, most of life is based on nothing loftier than luck.

After the long months (or was it years?) of being cooped up during the pandemic, simply getting to roam free in the world again was thrilling. I remember how, finally being out in wide open spaces essential for boy energy, my favourite thing to say to my sons was “run on ahead.” It’s a line I’m sure many parents relish deploying whenever they can; the subtext is of course closer to something my Scottish grandmother might have said: “get the fuck.” But saying it feels good for good reason. When it comes to parenting, getting distance is a really good metaphor for, well… getting distance.

Aside from handing back a ton of failing essays in my life, I’ve never had to deliver much bad news. When parents decide to separate, having to tell your kids that their lives are about to be turned upside down and inside out, is terrifying. You seek advice, you strategize about when to do it, what to say, what not to say, and try to imagine how such big news will possibly land in little lives. All the while knowing, of course, it’s about something that you want for yourself, at least more than you don’t, that’s pointing you to the pain you’re prepared to inflict.

Every semester as a teacher, I go through a distinct honeymoon phase with a new crop of students: for a few solid weeks, we feel downright decently about one another, until I have to go and harsh the mellow by assigning grades. Like awards, we want grades to matter when they flatter, and be irrelevant when they don’t. It’s a cheeky relativism that shows our love/hate relationship with feedback. Performance reviews of any kind tend to be over-burdened with meaning, not cause they’re so important, so much as cause they’re so infrequent. Which is why, unless my sons are setting their desks on fire, I’m not super interested in report cards.

A lot of my writing is about being a mother. Which is kind of ironic to me, since the early days of parenting felt marred by mourning a creative life.

These days my sons are wise to the fact that they provide much fodder for my work. I can barely tell them about a new project before they’re doing some wacky math to calculate their cut. Recently I did slightly better than breaking even on a show, and they still somehow figured that I owed them 10 bucks. But I don’t actually talk about them very much, not as real people, not like in real life. And I think that’s mostly cause, well… I can read a room.

One of the things I enjoy about my sons going to school in French is the random way that franglais, that fun French/English hybrid, winds its way into our Anglo home. For instance, we consistently use the word “câlin,” for some reason, in place of its English counterpart hug or cuddle. Words we never say. “Do you want a câlin?” I’ll often ask at the sight one of my son’s upset. And I’m curious about the swapping out here, of our mother tongue for our second one, and wonder if there’s something about the unique nature of touch and physical intimacy that unconsciously inspires us to reach for special expression.

Parents are people. That might seem like a rather stupid thing to say. But I think it’s easy to forget when you play such a huge role in the life of a dependent person with extensive, pressing and often loudly expressed needs, that you too are a human with needs. Those oft-cited advisements to put on your own oxygen mask first, or fill your own cup, are typically followed by the rationale that doing so makes you better able to serve others. But many have pushed back against this reading, saying it skips over the notion that it was also always a good idea to attend to yourself, simply because you’re a human worth tending to.