My college degree is in Creative Arts. (Yes, that was a degree.) I studied mostly music but also drama and writing and art history and had an unfortunate stint in a modern dance class. I taught music in many forms and eventually started Musical Beginnings. I continued to study early childhood music, voice, and piano, with an occasional business workshop thrown in for balance. What I did not study was public health. Or epidemiology. Or crisis management. Yet over the course of the last year and a half those are the skills I’ve had to acquire, in what limited measure I could.

In mid-March of 2020 Musical Beginnings, like so many others fortunate enough to be able to do so, went online. This worked out pretty well for the private students, who had abruptly lost connection with every other teacher in their lives; it gave them continuity and something and someone to engage with. Adult students, freed from yet another commute, thought it was fabulous. It didn’t work out quite as well for my preschool classes but we gave it a try and I learned a few things about cameras and lighting and puppetry that I hope never to have to use again. Then my classes spent a year on the front lawn and I learned to pay attention to what time the sun set. Inside, I  reconfigured each lesson room to have two pianos with a Plexiglass divider in between. We opened the windows and were diligent about masks. Some students and teachers did in-person lessons, most stayed online. As the months progressed and families got weary of Zoom more people filtered back into the rooms. After the vaccine even more came back. My classes moved back inside this past August.

At each juncture I read whatever I could from whichever sources I thought reliable. I tried hard to implement the best practices of the moment. The science evolved and opinions diverged. I gave my best guess and took a stand on staff vaccination early on; as a result, one of my favorite teachers chose to leave. I wondered if I was doing the right thing. I wondered if there was a right thing. Still I pressed on, armed scantily with my music-drama-art training, into the high-stakes world of infection prevention. Because…well, what choice did any of us have?

And we press on still, into the new uncertainties of the moment. Personally, I trust the science but am mixed on mandates for businesses. I wish everyone would get vaccinated but am not ready to turn away those who don’t. I want things to get back to normal but know that pretending won’t make it so. And anyway, things never go back to the way they were. The only way is through.

So here’s to us all finding our way through, however we can. Happy Thanksgiving. —Linda