My Take Your Kids To Work Day was a coronavirus adventure of high drama at home | Maria Panaritis
I walked my kids into the office - our kitchen and our dining room - and hoped for the best. It was a COVID-19 lockdown rerun.
I knew from the crack of cloudy dawn on Thursday how this supposedly special day with my children would go.
Take Your Child To Work Day, Coronavirus 2020 Edition, was as tantalizing as a slice of Kraft cheese on stale Wonder Bread. A COVID-19 lockdown rerun at home in which mom, dad, and elementary-age kids whine, then hug, shout, and then coddle, all while shuttling between a dining-room table that looks like a volcano of worksheets and art supplies, and the kitchen that is a home office/cafeteria.
There was no putting on proper clothes. No imagining that my sons, a first grader and a kindergartner, would get a break from the doldrums of public school by going to my grown-up newsroom in the big city. No ride on what we call the “choo-choo trolley” out of suburban Philadelphia and into Philadelphia.
There were jeans and a raggedy shirt for me. Sweatpants and tees for the boys. And this single sartorial showstopper: The kindergartner in a shirt with a diorama of a swamp scene on it. Every time he jumped, a plastic frog and snake did, too. The office setting: a war zone of a house littered with schoolwork, toys, and the work of two parents handling four full-time jobs each day.
Pandemic pandemonium has been the norm for weeks in our house, ever since the kids were ripped out of school and confined at home, like all the rest of us, on orders of a Pennsylvania governor trying to contain the COVID-19 contagion. Work and home life are now ONE. Our cubicle-mates are now our children.
Still. Couldn’t we at least pretend to be at work? If only for the public good? I am in the business of storytelling here at The Inquirer. And some stories are so chaotic they must be told.
One highlight:
“Mommy!” my 5-year-old blurted after lunch. His 7-year-old brother was one room over bouncing a yardstick into his palm. “You know that stick you got? He was chopping it on my head."
Another:
The 7-year-old, while on a late-afternoon break, retrieved a plastic golf putter from the basement, sat on the kitchen floor, balanced it on his head, and demanded that I look at him. I snapped a picture.
“I thought you’d like this,” he said.
How does a special day like this begin? Poorly.
When my editor called first thing in the morning, I couldn’t say “hello” into the phone until this same child had finished reciting the names of every Harry Potter character on the T-shirt he’d just put on.
Minutes later, I’d find him and his little brother hunched over the top step of the staircase. They were peering into a narrow crevice.
“What are you two doing here? Go downstairs now," I said. We had to go to work. (Haha.)
The crevice, they told me, had swallowed a dime-size Paw Patrol wristwatch accessory. One of the boys had dropped it and then “accidentally” kicked it into the wall.
“Go downstairs now,” I said a second time.
“But Mommy," the little one/kicker protested, "Marshall is in the wall!”
Buh-bye, Marshall. Hello, homework, mommy work, daddy work, and drama, drama, drama.
In the dining room, the little one plunked down near a heap of workbooks. Across from me at the kitchen table was the older one plowing through schoolwork. In a third-floor office was my husband — at least when he wasn’t jumping into the mix like a tag-team wrestler. A Realtor, his work has been made all the more challenging by the governor’s having ordered much of his industry shut down due to COVID-19.
I opened my laptop after breakfast. Minutes later, the 7-year-old lifted his head.
“Mommy?” he said. “I’m a little bit hungry.”
“Didn’t you just have a bagel?" I replied.
Procrastinator.
“Mommy,” he continued. “At the end of the day, can we have an ice cream party like we did at your office last year on Bring Your Child To Work Day?”
He turned and goaded his brother, who had been too young to join us for this “holiday” last year at the newsroom: “There was an ice cream party with gummy bears and vanilla!”
Guess who then skulked into the kitchen with a pouty face and threw his arms around my neck?
“I’m sad that I missed the ice cream,” he said, “and I’m sad that I didn’t get to go to work with you."
I escaped to the porch outside. Called my editor. Told her I was dying. I was Rocky in the corner of the boxing ring. She was Mickey, coaxing me off the ropes.
“I just talked to my boss," I announced when I returned. "She asked if it was still Take Your Child To Work Day. I said, ‘No. It’s Call-911-I’m-Losing-My-Mind Day.' ”
The first grader laughed. I saw a sparkle shoot off a silver dental cap near his molar. Like he was some Joe Pesci wiseguy. Then came a barb from the counter.
“It should be called Thank-God-For-My-Husband-So-I-Can-Write-My-Column Day,” said my spouse, I.J. Hines.
Who was I to argue? The good man was putting away the lunch he had made for the boys — Tostito Scoops, chili, beans, cheese, salsa, and sour cream. “Taco Tubs" in honor of Methacton High School cafeteria lunch ladies from days gone by.
By dinner, I vowed, there would be ice cream. And sprinkles. And when Friday rolls around, I knew, we would get to do this all over again.