Chapter Seventeen: Co-Parenting During Covid
Dear Diary,
My friend Chiara recently called me as she was driving to the Canadian border. “I don’t blame you for trying to get out, but I thought the border was closed,” I joked as I pictured her for a split second trying to make a break for it. Turns out she was headed to a border patrol office somewhere near Vancouver in order to exchange her 11 year-old daughter with her ex-husband, a Canadian national, for summer vacation per their standard custodial schedule. Normally, this is a much simpler matter of arranging a few flights and other travel arrangements. This year, after consulting with an attorney and exhausting every other possible option, this was literally the only way that they could legally effectuate the handoff.
Chapter Eight: Silver Linings
Dear Diary,
As someone who is easily moved to tears during the best of circumstances, I am finding myself even more emotionally charged during this pandemic. I feel a lump in my throat when I see signs posted in windows thanking essential workers, I get choked up when I hear people clapping for frontline workers at night; I was practically gutted by that letter from a retired farmer in Kansas enclosing a N-95 mask to Governor Cuomo the other day. I tear up so often, I have taken to continuously chopping onions so as to not alarm the children.