Winter in New England was a lonely time for my pandemic-era toddler.
We missed the drive-by Santa and, while our snowman was delightful, he didn’t make for very good company.
If her little brother hadn’t been born in January, it’s likely my daughter Senita wouldn’t have spent time with any other kids at all.
Spring started rough too.
As soon as the first warm day hit, I was a wee bit too excited to find my daughter friends in a brand new town and threw an unsanctioned St. Patrick’s Day party on the public library’s grounds.
It ended up being a freezing cold day that only brought a couple other kids out and didn’t find its friendship gold at the end of the rainbow.
And, in hindsight, visiting the Easter Bunny who hops out of the woods straight at your daughter’s car window was a terrifying mistake.
But the last two months have been good.
Though we started venturing back out into the world with literal baby steps, we seem to be hitting our stride.
New England is leading the way in beating the Covid-19 pandemic but challenges still remain for kids under the 12-year-old vaccine threshold.
As a stay-at-home dad to a two year old and a four-month-old, I’m acutely aware that a family’s immune system is only as healthy as it’s least-vaccinated child.
With viral transmission rates under 1% in our community, our daily lives aren’t all that different anymore except that I don’t take the kids into the grocery store, we avoid in-door dining, and our library story times are now held outdoors and are weather-dependent.
Instead of letting Senita play with as many toys as she wants in the children museum’s common room, I now let her smell as many flowers as she wants on a stroll around the reservoir in town.
The place we visit most frequently is our local playground.
Playgrounds are the perfect spot for a pandemic-era toddler: outdoors, well-ventilated, and social but with incidental contact at best.
The playground is an outdoor space where she can safely be around others and test both her physical and social skills.
I’m as excited about Senita being brave enough to go down the big slide all by herself as I am about her acknowledging and taking joy in another kid’s presence.
A few weeks ago we made friends picking dandelions with a girl named Ariana and invited her to throw sticks with us into the creek.
Her dad said it was the closest thing she’d ever had to a play date. I gave him my number to arrange another but, well, you know how men are.
Still, it was a great lesson in sharing and Senita’s first one-on-one interaction with a girl her age in a long time.
We’ve since started a small playgroup at the park from a local parenting group and are benefiting in lots of ways.
Senita’s favorite part of this week’s visit was just quietly swinging next to a girl named Bella and got really excited that she was carrying a Minnie Mouse doll.
They didn’t really talk but they were happy to be near each other and Senita has asked about Bella (and her Minnie doll) several times since.
I love that there’s a place she’s excited to go again and people we can reasonably expect to see.
Of course, like anything in public, the playground is hit or miss. Senita was pretty sketched out on a recent visit by a weird gypsy girl who kept following us around.
I don’t know for sure that she was a gypsy girl, I just know that she was of school age, but not in school, and wearing multi-colored harem pants.
It’s possible her family was just really passionate about making their own clothes, but I silently admired my daughter’s friend-making discretion.
I suspect there will be more unsettling big-kid encounters like this one as schools start closing for summer and a whole new cast of kids and caregivers enter her world.
In an era when even library story times have gone virtual, the playground offers a real sense of community and life beyond the screen. In the good ways, the bad ways, and every way in between.
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