Everything is at a distance these days, isn’t it? I just finished watching a press conference from earlier this morning in which our governor cancelled in-person classes for the rest of the school year. For my older two, that means they’ll be continuing with their required distance learning through the end of next month. For my younger two, that means the optional schoolwork they’ve received from their teachers is going to be much more important.
I’m sure Cricket will love that.
Two days ago, he had a hissy fit about doing his schoolwork because he wasn’t going to get credit for it. I don’t know if that will change with the governor’s latest order, which has left me with a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. I suspect many other parents are feeling the same right now.
We’re together in that, yet alone.
I’ve resumed my Star Trek: Voyager rewatch, and the first episode I watched this morning was “Waking Moments,” which saw the crew held hostage in a communal dream by an alien species whose primary existence is our dream world. At first, their dreams were individual, and many of them were nightmares. The communal dream they later found themselves in wasn’t exactly pleasant, either, and I couldn’t help thinking how closely it mirrored the current pandemic situation. Being confined at home, without any meaningful work to do, with increasingly grumpy kids, is not exactly my idea of a good time.
The crew of Voyager were alone, yet together.
And they were confined, just as I am now. Except that where they had a holodeck they could escape into for a bit of relief from the inevitable cabin fever, I have only books and TV and the internet. That all sounds well and good, but one can only watch so much TV. One can only read so many books. I can only walk so far around my house and my yard.
At least if I lived in town, I could shout at the neighbors across the street and have some sort of conversation. If I lived in town, my internet connection would be of a higher quality than what we’re able to get out in the sticks. On the other hand, the kids’ ability to play outside would likely be hindered by proximity to neighbors.
Distance – it all comes down to distance these days, doesn’t it?
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Suddenly they all died. The end. 
I live in a suburb with very close neighbors and I have been wishing lately for more distance. I figure the walls wouldn’t feel so close if I had space outside to walk around, but everyone else has the same idea and the sidewalks get crowded. On the other hand, it’s nice to hear them so close and know I’m not in this alone. Distance means so much more than it used to it seems. Lovely post, thank you.
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Our driveway is a quarter of a mile long, and we have neighbors who live just across the road from us. But we don’t really know them, so we don’t usually interact with them a whole lot. “Neighbor” takes on a whole new meaning when you live in the country. Actually, we don’t really know any of our neighbors, now that I think about it. We did know most of our neighbors where we lived before, but that was because we lived in the school district I’d grown up in (which consists of several towns); one neighbor had been a schoolmate, another set of neighbors were parents of a couple of my schoolmates, and a third neighbor had been my high school English teacher. I miss having that connection to a community where we live now. I don’t know the people in the town we live near; I don’t know the neighbors. And I think if I felt more connected to our new community, I would feel less alone out here in the boonies.
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