WHAT PANDEMIC ? by Pat Frickey
When the pandemic seriously hit , I had just wrapped up a sixweek session of substitute teaching in a fourth-grade class at the International School Hamburg . Though long past retirement age , I had been subbing nine years at the school after a previous fortyyear teaching career in the US and Germany .
Then came two months of isolation . That was a long two months .
In bounced my four-year-old grandson , James . He and his parents , my son and daughter-in-law , had been cooped up in their apartment ( with no garden ) in Hamburg . The kita was closed . Like everyone else , if they even dared to go outside , they religiously scrubbed their hands in sanitizer afterwards ( a hot commodity ). Playgrounds were off limits . Before that , James was that kid at the top of the jungle gym or racing to the highest slide the minute he hit a playground . After a couple of months of lockdown , they joined me in my house ( with a large garden ) here in Stade .
My grandson is a mover , a shaker , a jumper , a climber , and a somersaulter . This was quite a revelation to me . My son at age four had spent most of his time looking at books , happily playing on his own with his toys , but mostly drawing pictures . Not James . Luckily , with three adults in tow , we kept him , or he kept us , pretty well occupied the ten weeks they were here . He adored the garden equipped by my daughter-in-law with a wooden playhouse ( that she had constructed a year earlier ), a swing , a climbing rope , and the garden hose to spray everything in sight . Down came the books , Playmobil , Strax , Lego , and the Masters of the Universe figures / castles I had tucked away up in the attic . Thanks to Amazon , we could load up on arts-and-crafts supplies . They are a NO TV family . So he and I did yoga online with Jaime and Cosmic Kids . Sendung mit der Maus ramped up their shows , also online , to help young children and their parents get through the endless days .
We had a lovely time , exhausting but lovely . James ’ s English improved by leaps and bounds . My son had always spoken only English to him , but as James would boast : “ Daddy spricht Englisch mit mir , aber ich antworte auf Deutsch .” Now he was rattling off in English without even noticing it .
It worked out so well they returned for another three-month stay around Christmas time into the next year ; we even had snow in January for a snowman , sledding , and snowball fights . By then , my son had finally relented , and the last box came down from the attic : they bonded over his nearly 100 precious Star Wars figures , including the Millennium Falcon and an AT-AT Walker . I think I know who enjoyed that the most .
Whenever James comes to visit now , he greets me quickly in fluent English , then makes a beeline to the garden or his favorite toys . What pandemic ? Oh , you mean the glorious times James and his family came to stay .
34 THE SILVER LINING