Category Archives: Family

What About the Kids?

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

In normal years, the nonprofit Twin Cities Theater Camp (TCTC) offers professional quality theater training for seven dozen or more kids. Over five weeks, these six through fourteen-year-olds develop creatively in an environment where it is okay to spontaneously break into song, dramatically slide across the floor, talk endlessly about the energy of being on stage, eat lunch, play outside then go back to work. In five weeks they will evolve from kids at camp into a theater company. Friendships grow strong as they learn acting, singing, dancing skills, and expressing themselves through art.

Ninety kids were registered in less than thirty minutes for TCTC 2020, many returning for their fourth, fifth, sixth year. Then COVID-19 claimed center stage. Like many nonprofit boards, TCTC directors were faced with cancelling summer plans. Fortunately they had a management team of teachers and artists already working virtually with kids, who had ideas for building a different kind of program.

Four hours a day for three weeks, five teachers and 46 kids worked together virtually. Many parents called those hours the best their kids had experienced since March 17.  In fifteen days, an eighty minute video YouTube presentation was written, produced and performed by kids and teachers for viewing by an invitation only audience. Technical wizardry made the show possible.

It’s always entertaining to watch TCTC’s productions. But unlike great finales, what stopped adult audiences this year was listening to nondramatic sections–kids talking about COVID lock down, about things they fear, and things that make them happy.

Their fears ran from scary movies and snakes to becoming sick, to losing others, to developing an illness that can’t be cured. Under their words, there is sadness about the abrupt changes with no known end. Immediate family and friends are what they value. They have sad times, days they aren’t sure they can keep going, they miss the hugs of friends and distant family, and they have sparks of happiness that keep them hopeful. Older kids also worry about societal equality struggles. While still optimistic, reality has diminished that sweet childish belief that destiny is in their hands. Until the future is more clearly understood, they get by with help from friends, parents, family and other adults who care.

A big thanks for all who are caring for kids. Virtual hugs for you.

After the Battle

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

Surviving war does not equate to a free ticket home.

COVID-19 is like a world war with every country fighting unique battles to beat a largely invisible enemy. When a vaccine is ready, how will wearied populations move forward? How will first responders and all on the front lines find their equilibrium? Where will we mourn our dead?

A good number of the 40 Thieves on Saipan WWII platoon survivors re-enlisted for the Korean conflict. They had seen too much, experienced too much, to return to the family dinner table. For the rest of their lives, many fought the bloody Pacific Theater battles of their youth. Between 1.4 and 1.5 million World War II vets fought in Korea. My father was one of those.

Some WWI and WWII vets disappeared after finding home side re-integration in the United States too difficult. My father-in-law was one of those. Without credit cards and mobile phones, pulling up roots in the 1950s was far easier. The  women they left behind were granted the dignity of being known ‘war widows’ even if somewhere their legal spouse was alive.

Mental health issues have dogged veterans as long as men have waged war. Some WWII and Vietnam vets who had suffered as prisoners of war returned home able to rehabilitate. Others did the best they could. I worked with a well-functioning man who chose to remove his shoes and eat his lunch under his desk. He had spent months in a Russian prisoner camp and carried this vulnerability to the work world.

Hit with the double whammy of COVID-19 and economic tsunami, not all of us will have the tenacity to start over. Suicide rates in the United States have risen dramatically since the start of the millennium, particularly among white middle age men. Vietnam and Afghanistan vets are dying at their own hand daily.

The world will not be a friendlier place in 2021, so where will we find ourselves? In a New York Times op ed David Brooks writes about the US tide of “safetyism” that buffers children and young people from disappointment, from accidents of any size, from developing tenacity. He says that tenacity is not a feature of good character, but what people are trained to do. One of our first challenges will be to find tenacious leaders in families, communities, schools, corporations and government and ask them to help everyone to build the skill set. And to build supports for those who are struck with hesitancy or fear on the journey to our new world.

Surviving this virus war will be a different kind of battle. Stay home. Stay safe.

 

My father speaks

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

My father is dying. The many physical failures of his eighty-five-year-old body have gained control in a way no medical intervention can defeat. He has a health directive in place so our family waits. In this holiday month a Christmas tree lights his apartment and seasonal music has become lullaby and comforter.

After the first assault of pictures, he will not watch the news from Connecticut. He said “We’ve seen this before” and asked the channel be changed.  After growing up in a family of hunters and serving in both World War II and the Korean conflict, he has never owned a gun and doesn’t believe people living in the United States need guns in their homes. While more lucid earlier this week we spoke about a two year old boy killed by a brother only twice that age with a gun found under their father’s pillow. My father was saddened by the event.

My tears yesterday and today come from the sadness my very small family is experiencing, and for the horrific grief families in Newtown will carry forward for so many decades.

How sad to think that as a nation we have nothing to offer these families. No hope that there won’t be another massacre. No government protection of innocent lives against weapons meant to kill many people with minimal effort.  We are not safe—not in movie theaters, shopping malls, colleges, churches, kindergarten classrooms. Powerful individuals with deep pockets of money have better friends in our government than young parents of beautiful children. If President Obama visits Newtown, I would have him bring every member of our Senate and ask each of them to sit for an hour with the family of a victim, to comfort a now childless mother or motherless child, and to carry that memory every day of their lives. To be simply human among real people.

When people ask what they can do for my family, I ask for their thoughts and prayers. That’s appropriate when losing our patriarch. When I ask what I can do for the families of Newtown, prayer seems like a less than satisfying offering.  But they are in my prayers.