How ironic that National Teacher Appreciation Week and National Nurses Week should overlap.
The week for teachers was May 4-8 and the week to honor nurses was May 6-12.
And how appropriate the calendar should roll around to those weeks at the peak—thumbs, eyes, legs and teeth crossed, maybe past the peak (?)— of a crisis unparalleled in almost all our memories.
If you go poking around in dictionaries for the many definitions of “teach” and “nurse,” as verbs, you can find, on about the third page, one that, astonishingly, fits both of those sacred occupations.
“To take charge and watch over.”
Exactly. We put a great deal of trust in teachers and nurses. One watches over our children and another watches over us, our friends and loved ones. Neither is an easy task.
Of course this wretched spring of the year double-20s has scrambled everything. Teachers have had to endure empty classrooms, but have never stopped teaching. Nurses have, in many cases, put themselves at risk as front-line soldiers on the battlefield that is the War Against COVID-2019.
Forgive the allusion to what’s been happening as a “war” but it is so appropriate. And so numbing to come to the realization that an unstoppable part of any war is casualties.
And so there have been. Many thousands.
Teachers are also fighting a battle in spring, 2020, one to continue to provide education for young minds. Many things are unfair in war and one of the most unfair is what it does to those minds.
Our teachers are determined that the young minds in school today—especially the Classes of 2020—won’t be cheated of this crucial portion of their education.
Teachers in our area have continued to do what they do best, teach. They have reached out to their students through technology and continued to show how much they care.
And, remembering the response to the teacher parade which circled around Rockdale a couple of weekends ago, the students care right back.
That response had a name. It’s called “love.”
As for nurses, and the entire medical profession. What kind of person does it take to shove a cotton swab up someone’s nasal canal to get a sample to determine if they are infected with COVID-19? Nurses take precautions, of course, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that leaves them more vulnerable to catch the disease than someone at home binge-watching Netflix.
That doesn’t count the number of smaller tasks every nurse who ever took a breath has performed on a daily basis.
To put it more descriptively. Does the word “bedpan?” hold any meaning for you?
Nurses, and teachers, do a thousand little things every day, and a couple of dozen big things, that we probably never think about.
That’s all we’re asking in the wake of “their” weeks. Think about them.
And saying a couple of million “thank yous” wouldn’t hurt.—M.B.
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