Fresno native pushes her kids’ school to reopen. ‘Fight for what makes sense,’ she says

Get tough. Suck it up. Do what needs to be done and handle it. I was raised by these mantras, and now I continue to live life through them — 10 years after first becoming a mom. (Yes! This last week ushered me into the double-digit parenting stage!) These same slogans are also now driving my family through nearly two disappointing and absurd months of distance-learning. (But who’s counting, right? Ha.)

Yet despite an ingrained go-get-em attitude, this new normal is impairing my family (and I’m guessing, most of us) much more than a stupid virus ever could.

Crying because Zoom kicked us out of our virtual classroom again. Crying because we can’t find the right workbook in our 3-foot-high stack of classroom materials on our dining room table. Crying because the “submit document: button isn’t working. Crying because the video window disappeared and we missed the directions for paragraph writing. Crying because her sister was answering her own teacher across the room and distracted her reading during the test. Crying. Every. Day.

They cry, so I cry. And then we get back up and forge ahead. Like a war. Except we’re not allowed to pick our battles like we usually can in parenting. We’re pretty much required to battle everything at once. And we’re the lucky ones, the demographic who has every tool and resource to actually cope with stupidity like this. (I really cry when I think about all who don’t ....)

This last month alone had me busier than some of my most jam-packed career years. My personal public rallies have included a controversial, in-person flag salute on our school district’s lawn and regularly inciting local parents to email our school boards, principals, teachers, local and state representatives, county officials (public health included) as well as helping to create and moderate a Facebook group of like-minded local parents to collectively organize efforts and loudly lobby for something none of us ever thought we’d have to fight so hard to get: In-person education for healthy children and low-risk people, some way or another, before 2021. (I commend Central Valley schools and districts emphatically fighting our corrupt state in favor of in-person education — please know this is not the norm in Los Angeles County.)

I’m exhausted and exhilarated, barely recognize myself and also fear I’m beginning to look like my town’s crazy lady. But, it’s OK. Why? Because, if this is the only way my daughters will tangibly witness how to confront and fight for what makes reasonable sense in this trendy age of overreaching entitlement, false perceptions of reality and statewide agenda-driven decisions solely created to leverage political aspirations of a certain California governor who desperately wants to ascend to a fast-tracked seat in the U.S. Senate ... so be it. (Recall him first, folks. Time is ticking.)

In my 2017 book for first-time moms, I wrote how the first year of motherhood trains us to be resilient. Well, 10 years of motherhood is now demanding me, as well as all of us on the same parenting timeline, to stand up or shut up. I now discuss topics with my kids I never imagined I’d broach before the teen years — what it means to think critically, how to make sound decisions based on facts and not fear, and why it’s never a good idea to believe most anything you see on TV or read (this opinion piece included, do your own homework). “You must dig deep,” I tell them. To my surprise, they seem to listen.

Speak up, parents. Get tough. Write. Organize. Do what needs to be done and handle it —with our kids in tow. Our schools and communities are on fire and we’ve got no choice but to go running towards the danger to salvage as much as we can. Even if we’re crying while doing it.