Inching

July 9, 2020

I was at a Girl Scout camp in New Jersey one summer when I was 12, and that day's activity was a hike up to a nearby lake. As we climbed what felt like a mountain but must really have been a hill because New Jersey lacks mountains, I felt as though I were swimming through the sticky air. Several of us were complaining, and our counselor wanted to instill some fortitude.

"Inch by inch, everything's a cinch!" she called encouragingly from the front of the line.

"Maybe that's true," I grumbled to the girl behind me. "But we're going yard by yard, so everything's... well, you fill in the blank."

Then the counselor said something else that at the time I chalked up to being another stupid platitude. But it has rung true so many times since then that I'd like to zoom back to that gloriously mask-free '80s summer and give her a non-virtual hug:

Just because you can't see the end of the trail doesn't mean it's not there.

Besides watching people contract COVID-19 itself, one of the hardest parts about the pandemic for our kids is that we don't know when and how it will end. We don't know if that bend in the trail up ahead leads to something that feels like normal life or is just another uphill climb. Humans crave certainty, and for kids this need is even stronger than in adults.

In a time like this, then, in which so much is unknowable, we can focus on filling our kids' ears with what we do know. We don't know what school will look like in the fall, but we do know that we'll make sure that they're educated and that no doors will be closed to them in their careers. We don't know when we'll be able to have birthday parties like we used to, but we do know that birthdays will come, and that we will celebrate,

This summer, though, it can help to fill our kids' lives with small achievable experiences. Hikes in the woods are good, but the hills can be metaphorical if you prefer. And as long as you help your kids see where the end is, it won't matter whether you go inch by inch or yard by yard.