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I can just picture last summer...the sun was shining, the sky....a pale blue of endless possibilities, the kids running around the neighborhood like ants in the heat, the pool was calling our name every evening and the playground was filled with laughter.
Playground Taped off during pandemic, Knoxville TN. Photo By: C&M Online
Fast forward to Summer of 2020 and now we are sheltered, masked, quarantined and the sky doesn’t look so blue anymore.
Riots, recession and a deadly pandemic have changed what Summer brings and has plunged the US into deep crisis. People are fighting, service is only an afterthought, business’ are closing and what was once the best time of the year is now a countdown until the Fall and a hope that things will soon change. Our children will never forget the Summer of 2020 because school ended early without yearbooks and graduation, birthday parties were cancelled, cookouts banned, playgrounds taped off with caution tape like a crime scene and families being told to keep their distance in fear of the unknown. So what do we tell our children? How do we help them understand that things will soon get better? Well….We can be optimistic.
We can remind them of last Summer, we can teach them to love their neighbors, we can spend our time inside educating the future generation on what went wrong.
We as parents have a responsibility to raise our children to love, care and fight for what is right. Showing our children what is lacking from one Summer to the next can be the best educational experience we can give them right now. Use this opportunity to talk to them, openly and honestly...this may be the only hope we have as humanity. Despite everything that is going on right now… We have “family time” back! Ball games, gymnastics and cheer camp are cancelled, giving us more time to spend around a dinner table. We can use this time to focus on raising this future generation to come out better than the direction we were heading. This may not be the best Summer...in fact it will most likely go down as one of the worst Summers in American history…. Maybe, just maybe...we can change this, maybe there is a light at the end of this Summer.
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