I’m going to talk about how my family is dealing with isolation, and the vague approximation of home-schooling we’re attempting. But before I go any further, this needs to be said: we’re all just trying to manage here, when it comes to our kids. Suddenly we’re all teachers; something the majority of us are not trained to do, and probably don’t have the time for. All of us are going to have different ways of dealing with this calamity, this just happens to be mine. It’s not a repudiation of yours.
I start with this defensive preamble because – fuck me – I see parents out their sniping at each other: aggressive, passive-aggressive, super fly TNT, about how to do the home-schooling thing. Don’t be like that, for fuck’s sake.
(Click the PDF icon, upper right, if you prefer reading a black-on-white script)
So the first thing is context. My sons are 4 and 8. Day care and primary school. Part of the sniping I’ve seen is a in the form of the parent of a 2-year-old lecturing another parent with teenagers. Holy shit man, these are different worlds. So let’s define our parameters. The second thing is this: my wife is at home as well, and we’re splitting responsibilities. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: single parents are the most capable people in the world. I don’t know who they do it. Gods knows how they doing it during a pandemic. The third thing is we have some space in our house, and a backyard.
So what I’m saying is: this is from the perspective of someone who is relatively lucky compared to what most others in the world are facing (with one or two caveats, as you’ll see below).
The next clarification. I’m not ‘home-schooling’ as such, if we’re talking about taking my eldest son (R), through a year of primary school, or preparing my youngest son (W) for pre-school. God no. I’ve pretty much 
accepted R and W are going to miss a year. We all are, aren’t we? The Olympics is going back a year; everything is. R will probably do grade 3 again. So what? This concerns me not at all. There will be a tonne of kids who will be doing the same year again. Again: so what? Do you get granted a higher score on your HSC if you are a year younger? No. Do they give you higher marks at uni if you are 19 rather than 20?
Don’t get me wrong – if you’re an overachiever who can home school effectively enough to have your kids ready for the next grade, then good for you. Seriously, that’s impressive.
More context. My eldest son has some learning difficulties. Don’t mistake me: he’s got a very high IQ. He can spend an afternoon on the couch reading an entire book, for example, has an impressive vocabulary and sense of humour. But he really struggles in a number of other areas. I don’t want to go into the details, but we’ve got at least four diagnoses from four different specialists, and I’m not convinced any of them are right.
So what I’m saying is: we can’t do nothing. I see some parents out there saying: hey, do whatever you want, bake every day! The kids can do as they please! That’s great (though I often wonder if they are talking about toddlers here – again, context is key), but we can’t do that with my eldest. While I meant everything I said above about not caring in the slightest if he loses a year, I don’t want him to go backwards, either. So my wife and I are working hard with him, to make sure he’s treading water.
Some final context, I have casual work in the community sector. All that work has gone now, because of this fucking virus. I also earned money from live poker. That has gone, as well. Still, even in this we are lucky, because my wife is in the public service and we’ll get by. Many won’t. So many are staring at those frightening dole queues outside of Centrelink. So we’ll be fine on this count, but look, I’m not going to pretend this isn’t a good time for you to buy my short story collection. It’s getting great reviews, including from some of the biggest names in science fiction.
Enough of context, more philosophy. Structure. The experts – astronauts, Antarctic doctors, submariners – advise that you have to establish a routine (the linked article is quite interesting, and worth a read). In the words of astronaut Tim Peake, who spent 6 months on the International Space Station: “Habits and routine are so key to keeping everything under control in a confined and isolated situation,” he said. “That structure it gives you is vital; it’s key to feel that in situations that feel out of control. We need to embrace that at home in these difficult conditions for everyone. We call it normalizing the abnormal.”
Morning
I sleep late. My partner does breakfast and then takes the boys for a ride. This is ‘going to school’. We demarcate the day by the trip outdoors. So they leave home, and come back to school. I’ve made a dedicated space for them in the house to work, and I think it gets them (and us) in the right headspace. We have academic, creative, and quiet time during the day. It is not too onerous, by any means.
Lunchtime
I take over at midday. I make lunch. My youngest goes to sleep, my eldest does some chores. At 1:15, he dials into a Google Hangout with his class. I’m not sure how they do it, but his two teachers (one for Mandarin, the other for general studies), manage over 20 kids. They get assigned homework tasks.
Afternoon
The boys follow their schedule. My 8-year-old is great. He does his work and requires little monitoring, except – as mentioned above – in some subjects where I need to sit with him. My 4-year-old is, well, 4 years old, so he does require more attention. We have some breaks where we play games, get the nervous energy out. Often they’re a variation of games the father plays with his kids in Bluey.
At about 3:30 we head ‘home’. I take the boys out for a ride or walk lasting about 40 minutes. The streets get quieter every day. The private school near us has these immaculate green ovals with no-one on. These afternoons it does feel a little like the apocalypse; those empty streets we’d only seen in the movies. But there’s a certain solace even in the quiet. The rains have come now so the bush is thriving. Birds chirp. We pass the same old man most days. He takes a wide berth whenever he sees us and yells “three metres, three metres” as we pass by. Technically it is only 1.5, but I understand where he’s coming from.
Evening
We get home and the boys can do as they wish. This usually means television for the youngest and Minecraft for the eldest, which makes them both happy.
I’m meant to work in the evening. I’m meant to be writing. In this first week I haven’t done shit. I just watch updates on the virus, swerving between despair and anger as I see what is happening across the globe. Feeling hope when I see the quality of the Australian healthcare system, fear when I think about what is coming for them. Long past midnight, I fall into a restless sleep.
We’ve basically imposed so-called ‘stage three’ restrictions on ourselves for over a week now. While the country is in a weird limbo where cafes are closed, but you can go to the hairdresser (edit – I think this changed overnight); ten people can go to my funeral, but only 5 to my wedding, and where we are scolded for going to the beach, but where we’re fined if we don’t go and vote in local elections – my wife and I decided to simplify our choices.
We both work from home, we only go out to go to the grocery store or the chemist, and we each exercise once a day outside. In essence we’re following the advice of an esteemed group of 22 scientists from Australia’s best unis, who have urged a lockdown (as has the ABC’s Norman Swan, as does the Chief Medical Officer of Victoria; the Australian Medical Association (which represents all the doctors), and the various groups representing nurses). I’m also doing it because the Australian Deputy Chief Medical officer described how an individual could be responsible for 400 infections in a month, if that person does not practice social 
distancing. I’m doing it because 10,000 healthcare workers in Spain have been infected. I’m doing it because 50 Italian doctors have died of the virus.
And finally, we have people very close to us who are severely immune-compromised (as probably every person reading this does), and we want to do our part to protect them.
I don’t mind solitude, or routine, so maybe I’m better prepared mentally most. My wife jokes that I finally have a legitimate reason to shut myself in. But I worry, of course, like any normal human. I worry about how long this is going to go on. I’m drinking more. Nothing dangerous: just more. As I write this the time has ticked over to 5pm, and all I can think about is that glass of whisky. As a parent I worry about how the kids are going, I’m worried about my own bad traits being imprinted in them as we are couped up together for weeks or months.
God this is been a long year, hasn’t it? We were confined to the house, back during the bushfires. Remember those? I barely can. Weeks inside this house, because the air outside was too dangerous to breathe. You will have missed it, but in the last few days a report came out the said at least 417 people died from the toxic air during the Australian bushfires, in addition to the 34 who died in the infernos 
that raged across this land.
Those weeks of the bushfires felt like an apocalypse: I’d look out the window and the sky would be orange, the air unbreathable. You could smell it. This pandemic is so very different. Now it is a beautiful autumn in Canberra. The air is clean, we’ve had rain, gardens are thriving. You can’t see the plague: and that’s the scariest part. It’s like a less grotesque version of John Carpenter’s The Thing. You don’t know who is infected – even the infected are not aware. So you shirk away from people, on the footpaths. There’s an atmosphere of paranoia that accompanies every individual you meet. What will this do to the psychology of communities, once this has passed?
And it will pass. One day, this, too, will be a memory. We’ll call it the Long Year. The Year of the Plague. The Lost Year. Something like that.
But between now and then, we need not feel hopeless, because there is something that each and every one of us can do. Our contribution is an absence. A withdrawal. Our contribution will be in an event that never occurs; a future that never happens. By withdrawing we potentially save the 400 who would otherwise be infected. Of them, about 80 would have gone to hospital, and of those, 4 – 12 would have died.
Which means we can save a dozen lives by the things we do not do. I think that’s a reasonable trade.