Fern Hollow Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down…
Indeed. In case you missed it, on Friday morning a bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed. This bridge is approximately one minute from our house by car and five minutes by foot. I drive over it at least twice a day a few days per week to get to my office or to take Sarah to school if there is a delay with the Pittsburgh Public school buses, as there was on Friday. Accounts vary about the exact time of the collapse, but Sarah and I missed being on the bridge at that time by about half an hour or an hour. I know we only would have been on it for a minute so could have been unscathed even if the timing was tighter, but it is still a scary thing to contemplate.
As I attempted to take Sarah to school by our usual route, we saw a ton of emergency vehicles blocking the way. I assumed it was a major accident, but I couldn’t see beyond the flashing lights. I have never seen so many emergency vehicles in one place and continuously arriving. As I returned from taking Sarah to school, I saw people in military gear and called Carl to say that something big must have happened. He checked the news and saw that along with the collapse of the bridge a gas line was severed, thus pouring gas into the air until it was shut off. Many colorful words of shock flowed off my tongue at the news. The absence of this bridge will now impact many people for the next few years. I expect it will take a while before I stop having the impulse to take my normal route, just like when the power goes out and you still flick the switch to turn on a light. Given that my normal commute to my office was five minutes, I can’t really complain about it shifting to ten or fifteen minutes, but it could go beyond that given how many people will be taking the same alternate path. I also feel more nervous about driving across any bridge, which you kind of have to do all the time to go almost anywhere in Pittsburgh.
Earlier in the week Carl and I took Amy to visit her middle school campus for next year. How is she going to be in middle school?! She is most excited about not having to wear a uniform anymore and about having no assigned seats for lunches. She is also eager to participate in her art class. When we got home from this excursion, Sarah was reading out loud to Grandpa from Let’s Go For A Drive by Mo Willems. Amy eagerly joined her for an impromptu performance that was filled with much energy and glee.
Sarah had many times throughout the past week of having big sad feelings. This was notably more than usual and we wondered if it was due to her approaching period. On Thursday her teacher called me to come get Sarah from school because she was so upset and complaining of a headache. Once she was in the car she immediately started talking about feelings sad at school, even though her teacher had said there wasn’t anything she noticed that would have caused sadness. Sometimes Sarah remembers some past time of sadness and the feeling becomes as real again as if it was new. This seemed the likeliest explanation and Sarah was in good spirits again in relatively short order.
Today is Sarah’s birthday eve, so yesterday we had a small party for her with two friends, masked for play and distanced when eating. As her first friend arrived I felt unexpectedly teary at having such normal moment of a friend coming inside to play. We haven’t done that in so long. To prepare, Sarah and Amy and I baked a cake and cupcakes and decorated the house with musical note items. Amy was a party-planning genius and totally took the reins once I started talking about a game idea of “pin the note on the staff” (which they had played with Anna in the past). While I was busy cleaning, Amy made a staff on construction paper and taped it to the wall. She then had the idea to make a “Go Fish” game except with musical note cards and when you didn’t get your request you would have to “Go Play,” taking a new card from the pile and playing a random note on the piano. She and Sarah made the cards. Amy also made musical notes out of perler beads, and she planned how she could teach people to draw musical-note mice. She wore her shirt with musical notes and cats, and when Sarah saw her she shrieked with delight and ran to put on her own similar shirt.
The party went well. Carl facilitated the kids drawing musical notes, cutting them out of construction paper, adding tape, closing their eyes, being spun around, and trying to tape the notes to the staff. Much laughter was had by all. After the pizza and cupcakes, the kids played Hungry Hippo, a game which Sarah always seems to win and we don’t know how she has such speed and power. Sarah had some big feelings about really needing a shirt the exact same color as Amy’s and about wanting to open her other presents from family members right away. So the last half hour of the party was challenging for Sarah (and me), but overall it really went well. It warms my heart to the extreme that Sarah has two kid friends that I really consider her friends. Sure, they have hardly seen each other and sure Sarah doesn’t always connect with them, but still. They are her friends.
After the friends left, Sarah was still having very strong feelings. Amy and I did too so it made for rather a mess of things. Carl was his usual calm self and helped us all relocate to regain our equilibrium. Later in the day as we talked about the bridge collapse, he said he read transcripts of the calls to 911 about the bridge and how impressed he was with the calm of the dispatchers in response to such a crazy situation. I said it reminded me of his level of calm in this house when the rest of us have flown off the handle and are desperately trying to grab that handle.
A couple other highlights from the week include Sarah peeling carrots by herself!! Sarah has been enjoying wearing glasses all week. They are non-prescription play glasses, but she has been wearing them to school and around the house. Sarah delighted in reading her birthday card from Mom-Mom, in using her new toy lawn mower from Pop-Pop, and in drinking from her new musical note mug from Grammy and Granddad. (She didn’t give a fig about the presents Carl and I got for her, at least not right away). Sarah and Amy played easily and happily many times yesterday. Sarah got a pop-up bus for her birthday and the kids delighted in riding to school, dealing with multiple calamities: Sarah forgot her lunch many times, she forgot her papers, and then Amy chimed in that the bridge had collapsed. Later, they sat at the card table and played Uno for a loooong time. Lastly, there was one snuggle session with Sarah when she was talking about how she used to watch Baby Babble 2 when she was very little. Then she called me “Mama Babble,” setting me up to respond, “Yes, Baby Babble?” I cracked up and she seemed quite pleased with herself for setting me up in this small joke.
I hope you are all well and that your bridges don’t collapse.
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