Speaking Up for Masks

 After our never-ending COVID quarantine experience, I started to think how this would affect our school year. Back when numbers were low, most officials agreed masks could come off or be optional, including schools. Of course people always forget about the kids and the fact that they don’t have the option to be vaccinated yet. 

Our district announced prematurely that masks would be optional for school. Well, the Delta variant doesn’t care what you think and has come back full force and has a good amount of us worried. 

We still don’t know if our girls had COVID. Their antibody tests came back negative but my PCP told me those tests are not accurate at all. This whole pandemic is full of uncertainty. 

A group of parents organized ourselves to speak up for a masking mandate at our elementary schools (re: unvaccinated) at an emergency School Board meeting. 

And yes, kids may be fine if they contract the virus. But my child can’t wear a mask well due to her disabilities and features. So I’m being asked to toss my child into the deep end where other families don’t want to mask at school. No mask = quarantine. Mask = no quarantine. You see where I’m going? If Hannah is constantly exposed at school, her education is fractured and she’s already delayed as is. Not to mention the disruption quarantining is for working parents. 

We’ve seen countless states open up schools only to immediately mask up or go virtual after a week or two because so many students are infected.

So I got my speech ready and presented my case to our School Board. The meeting went on for four hours. It was standing room only and heated - mainly from parents who didn’t want their kids masked. 

Looking back now, it’s interesting how much of us “Pro Masking” parents used the words “we/us/our” and the “Parent Choice” parents used the words “me/my/I.” 

Our School Board voted 4-1 to mandate masks in the elementary schools. The 1 man who voted “No” is trying to save his voter base and spot on the Board for re-election  :: eyeball ::

The Board will revisit the subject every month to reassess. 

Even though our group “won,” we didn’t feel good - the amount of hate and vitriol from parents is absurd. One Board member asked for a police escort to her car, Board members have had threats against them and their families. Over wanting to keep kids in the classroom.

Advocating is hard work. 

Eunice & Rosemary Kennedy

So my daily rabbit hole started when a fellow mom (whose son [that happens to have Ds] will be going to preschool with Hannah - woo!) posted this outstanding video from the ESPYs of Timothy Shriver accepting the Arthur Ashe Award of Courage at the ESPY awards. 

Honoring Eunice Shriver

*Frankly, I’m not sure why the ESPYs exist in general - a lot of these athletes don’t need stroked any more than they already are.

I digress - I loved hearing Timothy’s message and reminding everyone the power and purpose of those with different abilities. Maybe even shedding some new light to those in the audience who never heard of the word “inclusion.” 

I vaguely knew that the Rose and Joe Kennedy’s oldest daughter, Rosemary, had an intellectual disability. This is what I imagine prompted most of the Kennedy’s wonderful advocacy for those with intellectual disabilities. 

I know a recent book, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, is on the market and found a link that dipped a bit into it. The actual cause of her intellectual disability seems to have been preventable and is quite shocking (the end of the article does get politically biased as the author has a brother with Ds):

The Secret Lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy

“When that failed, she reached into Rose's birth canal and held the baby's head in place for an unbelievable two hours. In her book Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, Kate Clifford Larson writes, “It was well understood that preventing the movement of the baby through the birth canal could cause a lack of oxygen, exposing the baby to possible brain damage and physical disability.””

Utterly unbelievable. Rosemary had a difficult time growing up and her parents struggled with how to help her. Unfortunately in those days, horrific practices such as lobotomies weren’t unheard of. And more unfortunately, her father decided to proceed with this possible “cure.” The procedure ultimately left her unable to walk or talk for years. 

It’s quite a fascinating yet tragic story that I think I need to read in its entirety. If you can even say there was a silver lining to this story, it’s that it prompted a lot of great work by the Kennedy family for those with disabilities including the start of the Special Olympics in 1968.

I can’t imagine the direction we would have received for Hannah back in the 1940s. Heck, there are still MDs in 2017 who don’t have current information and still paint these babies’ lives as “less than.”

While I’m nervous about Hannah’s future and expect the most out of it, I’m also grateful she was born in modern times where a bulk of our society do see her potential.