By Katie McNally

Dear “Well Meaning” Commenter on my Social Media Post,

As we’ve passed the one-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic and arrived at the anniversary of the point where we realized this was going to be a longer haul than we hoped- it has become blindingly apparent to me that I owe a huge apology to many. Any time I, or my contemporaries, have expressed reservations and/or concerns about the challenges of raising children during a global pandemic- you have always been there, with your go-to reply,

“Well, you should have thought about that before you had children.”

First, I need to apologize for the kneejerk, “okay, Boomer” and the corresponding eyeroll that may or may not have happened. Secondly, you know what, when you said this, (and perhaps followed it up with assuring me that it was nowhere near as bad as what previous generations endured) you were right. I really should have anticipated an unprecedented global event. There is absolutely no excuse.

Shame on me…

In elementary school, I wasted so much time playing Oregon Trail, agonizing over whether to ford my wagon down the river or take the longer route, when I should have been focusing on learning how to read a crystal ball. I can only assume the countless number of members of my party I lost to misadventure and injury playing Oregon Trail were a grim harbinger of what was to come. You would think someone who had an alarmingly low success rate in getting her digital family to digital Oregon would have realized raising children would be hard. That is before you add in my clearly deficient future forecasting ability.

We will not even get into the time I wasted looking for Waldo and Carmen Sandiego when I CLEARLY should’ve been looking for tips and clues in Nostradamus’ writings….
While we’re here, I’d also like to apologize for the time I spent in my teen years obsessing over various boy bands. I now look back on all that time I spent mastering dances, watching TRL, and reviewing my allegiance to certain bands and want to cringe. That time could most certainly have been put to better use. No, not for schoolwork or preparing for college. Honestly, who needs SAT prep when you could be brushing up on numerology to prepare for parenting in a pandemic?

This letter will turn into a novel if I list all my missed opportunities in my twenties and thirties to refine my skills in forecasting the future. All I can say is- once again, I apologize for my grievous lack of foresight. Dating, going through breakups, continuing my education, starting my career, travel, weddings, major life decisions, health issues, having babies, and general daily life really aren’t an excuse.

I mean, YouTube existed by this point. I had myriad resources available to me without even leaving the house. I really should have mastered at least two acceptable forms of fortune telling. At the bare minimum, I should be able to scry using a bowl of water at this point in my life if I want to think of myself as a competent mother. The missed opportunities will haunt me for a lifetime.

I even passed up a chance to have a tarot reading on my honeymoon, silly me.

Clearly my lack of effort into sharpening my fortune telling skills was a much more egregious mistake than your instance of not wearing your mask over your nose. I just can’t apologize enough. I guess at this point all I can do is make sure I’m better equipped to accurately predict the next global pandemic and ensuing fallout before I make any other major life decisions. I can also make sure I do better by ensuring my children can adequately predict the future and understand just how hard it is to parent during an unprecedented event. I will be enrolling them in a beginner class immediately (on Zoom, obviously).

Who am I kidding? If I do that, I will never have grandchildren.

Well, I’m off to order a Ouija board…

Kisses,

A Millennial mom planning on staying up super late to review star charts and learn how to palm read to avoid repeating her mistakes.

*****

About the Author

Katie is a Mother of Gingers (kind of like dragons but scarier at points). She is currently at home reheating a mug of tea for the eleventh time and working on various writing projects as well as getting her life together in general. She is mining her 40s for any blogging material she can while never being sure if she is wearing the blanket scarf or its wearing her. You can read more on her blog, Knock, Knock, Knocking on Forty’s Door or follow Katie on Facebook