Sunday morning as I cleaned the kitchen after a morning of baking scones and prepping lunches for the week, my phone rang. It was my principal. “I’m going to take a quick phone call,” I announced as I moved towards the front of the house where our reception is best.
In that split second before answering and saying hello, my mind wandered to all the reasons my principal might be calling. I thought about all the conversations we had during quarantine in the spring and over the summer, as we prepared to come back to school. We’ve always been thought partners and I always look forward to our conversations.
So, as I let my mind wonder for a moment about what might be coming up with literacy this week, this fantasy quickly came to a halt as I realized the more likely reason for the phone call. Contact tracing. How many calls have come over the weekends, questioning my contact with people that have tested positive for Covid? Enough, that I should have known…
I look forward to future phone calls related to curriculum and big thinking. I know we will get back there…someday.
Where There's Joy 
I really hope that day comes SOON!
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Ugh, sorry it was that kind of phone call.
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Hope outshines reality in your slice! We just need to hang on to that hope for normalcy. Sweet, sweet normalcy!
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I think your little fantasy is a sign that it’s coming! The path to those days where your thought partner calls to share thoughts are in the near future. We don’t know how we’ll get there, but we will and I look forward to the ideas and plans that come from those thought conversations!
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Your writing had my mind racing to the many places our imaginations go when we are gripped by fear. I hope you are well, that safety returns for all of us – someday soon.
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I think we’re all looking forward to getting back to the important and grand conversations that we used to have. So much of what we do is rooted in panic and damage control these days… {Sigh.} We’ll get there again.
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I am hoping for the return to thought partners and big thinking but as the time drags on, I need so many reminders to believe in what I can’t always see.
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Ahhhh– even as I was reading, I was with you, sharing the hope that the phone call was going to be to have a think session for something great. Repression about the current state affairs is still possible, and I didn’t see the contact tracing coming until you did.
Love the suspense you captured in your post, Jess, as well as the hope that shimmers through it.
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Oh, I was right there with you, hoping that call would be about thinking and talking and then… contact tracing. Ugh. Soon, soon, soon. It has to be soon – or at least someday.
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Everything is so strange now, and has been for so long, that when the pandemic is over and we are safe again, adjusting back will be a challenge too. Thank you for this post. Although these times are awkward and uncomfortable at best, at least we know we aren’t the only ones feeling this way.
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