Country Club Vista Circle In Tanuri Ridge — Image by kenne
Most of the residence of Tanuri Ridge are empty-nesters or retirees, However, there’s a couple in our neighborhood with two preschoolers. We are all part of our “stay-at-home” world, and the children have no idea as to what is going on. Yes, they know there’s no going daycare, no going to the park, no swimming at our community pool (their parents are former U of A swimmers, now working in the Athletic Department), and that mom and dad are at home all the time. They will grow up in a world utterly different from that that we have known. They will only know the 21st century, hopefully learning from the 20th.
Each day we see the two children, once on our walk, the other when their parents bring them to play on the grass on Country Club Vista Circle. For a lot of us, our real education was from the street. Well, these kids are literally learning from the street. They live at the end of Tanuri Drive, so there’s no traffic in front of their home, making the pavement a perfect place to have a classroom.
With area parks closed, once or twice a day, the family has play-time on the grassy circle, often arriving pulling the kids in a wagon. (The live about 3/4 of a mile from the circle.) This family is fortunate. It has resources making adjustments easy.
The children Joy teaches reading (Literacy Connects) are not so lucky. They are probably in the streets because their home, maybe that of a diabetic grandmother, is no place to stay for long periods. The children and adults that Literacy Connects serve will suffer the most and may never completely recover from the effects of this pandemic, even if they stay healthy.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
— kenne
You are definitely correct that these children will grow up in a world completely different from the world we have known. So sad!
There’s a healing going on.