Tell me

Tell me what to do with an adolescent girl who's missing her friends.

Tell me what to do with a teenage boy who doesn't even like school but desperately yearns to go back for the social interaction.

Tell me what to do with a five-year-old who now quotes YouTube more than her teachers.

Tell me what to tell each of them about why they can't play soccer or practice gymnastics or have their friends come over to play.

Don't tell me the scientific reasons. I know those. I don't disagree with those.

Those reasons like COVID-19 has killed more than 141,000 people worldwide and infected 2.1 million, and any of us could be infected and not know it. Those reasons like this virus is the real, scary deal.

I know all of those.

Tell me, instead, how to heal the heart of my sweet ten-year-old whose identity is so closely tied to school and friends and gymnastics and performance that she is in tears more often now than I can remember.

Tell me, instead, how to connect with my quiet, solemn, fourteen-year-old, who has always been private but has now drifted into another deeper level of that.

Tell me how I will tell him that on May 17, his fifteenth birthday, he won't be able to get his driver's permit as planned because the DMV is still closed.

Tell me how I will tell my daughter that on May 18, she won't be able to have her 11th birthday party with her friends because we aren't allowed to see anyone outside of our immediate family.

Tell me how I know they will be okay as long as I need them to be okay through this endless Bill Murray Groundhog Day.

I know how to love them. But unlike when they were little, I no longer make up their whole world. They need more than I can give them. And I am now the one who says no to my daughter's friend coming over. We have moved into a new house, and my daughter's best friend hasn't even seen her new room. This breaks her heart. It breaks mine.

I remember being a fifth-grade girl, a sixth-grade girl, a seventh-grade girl, an eighth-grade girl. Friendships are the world.

Our current world doesn't make it easy to continue those connections.

Tell me how we do this.