By David Fortier 

Come Sunday morning, Mary and I will have heard from one of the kids that at least two members of the family have come down with COVID-19, one an infant, and that means a 10-day quarantine from daycare. As a parent, how to manage when you’ve got to return to work after five days, the limit for missing work? Who watches the child those remaining days?

When the kids were growing up, Mary and I managed. We ask ourselves today (and the kids who have their own kids) ask, “How did you do it?” One of the reasons is that one of us was always home. My work situation fluctuated, either I was between jobs, there were times I worked out of the house out of necessity while other times I was going into an office, other times I held more than one job, and on and on.

Mary worked endlessly, with household duties, including volunteering at school and church, taxiing kids to activities, laundry–every day and multiple loads–and on and on. She also worked parttime. When she went to law school, she went at night, and I stayed home with the kids.

It is different with families today, especially managing daycare. It doesn’t take a bout with COVID-19 to figure that out. And it gets complicated. It costs a heck of a lot of money to send kids to daycare, and at the same time, daycare workers don’t have much of an income. I just know we can do better for both our families and our daycare workers–and we will all be better off for it.

And in the meantime, we keep our fingers crossed that the ones with COVID have symptoms that are manageable and that they recover quickly.  

As for the week, it’s been a blur. I’ve been occupied with our home project. I have exited the sanding stage and moved onto the staining stage. Next comes painting. It’s been hours a day, and, yes, I am fortunate in that I have the “time” to give to this, but I am not very good at it. By the time I figure the best way to do something, it’s too late. For instance, I haven’t removed all vestiges of paint, gone ahead and stained, and, well, stain doesn’t really cover paint. 

While I am working, though, I listen to podcasts. Sometimes, I listen, but often the podcasts are background, familiar voices with interesting things to say that I can tune into or not. This week one I did pay attention to is the Ezra Klein Podcast, titled “A Weird, Wonderful Conversation With Kim Stanley Robinson.”

Robinson is a science fiction writer, acknowledged as one of the best. By way of an aside, I bought the oldest child a Robinson novel, his latest, a tome entitled “Ministry for the Future.” After a few pages. the oldest told me he needed to set the book down because it was too dark, too much to handle with everything else going on. So be warned. 

The podcast is more hopeful. For instance, Robinson concedes that after his novel was published the premises the book is set on have shifted for him and he is more hopeful. Of course, there are contingencies. For the podcast, click here. 

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As for our efforts here at The Bristol Edition, we continue to work on our memberships, getting things right for donors and readers. Of course, we encourage readers to become financial supporters with a small monthly contribution. If you have any questions, please contact me via my email at dfortier@bristoledition.org.  

Remember, readers who have signed up for email subscriptions need to sign up all over again on our new system. I know it’s clunky, but it’s necessary if we are going to expand our readership and donor base, with the goal of providing the best possible coverage of Bristol. 

Thank you for your patience. 

“Come Sunday morning” is intended to be a weekly review, a recounting of the past week and an anticipation of week to come. Among its features will be reviews of old and new books, sharing of favorite podcasts, some family news, Bristol events and happenings and issues surrounding education, work and community journalism. He can be reached at dfortier@bristoledition.org.  

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