GLEN
ALLEN, Va. (AP) — In a quiet suburb just north of Richmond, Virginia, a
mother and her three children spend a weekday afternoon planting a
small garden of spinach, red cabbage and lettuce. Across town, a dad
teaches his kids how to play volleyball on an empty court. In a
sprawling park, a father shows his son and daughter the perfect flick of
the wrist to skip rocks in a stream.
Similar
scenes — idyllic, except for the context — are playing out in
communities around the United States. Stuck at home, thrust together,
parents and children are navigating the most unsettling of circumstances
and finding new ways to connect. This is one community’s story,
gathered this week from walks and observations of families keeping to
themselves yet still, somehow, managing to remain part of a larger
whole.
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With
its top-rated schools, bucolic parks and large collection of shops and
restaurants, Glen Allen is the kind of place built for families. The
once-rural area is now one of the most sought-after suburbs of Richmond,
11 miles (18 kilometers) northwest of the capital. Its population of
just under 15,000 gives it a not-too-big and not-too-small feel, and its
proximity to Richmond makes it a prime commuter community.
As
in so many other American towns, life here has changed since the
coronavirus began to spread. Large gatherings are banned. Schools have
closed through the rest of the academic year. Countless businesses are
shuttered, at least for the time being.
Neighborhoods
and parks that are normally deserted on weekdays are now filled with
parents and children, out for a walk, run or bike ride together —
carefully maintaining distance, but still clearly part of a community.
On Wintercreek Drive, families play games together in their own yards
and talk to neighbors over backyard fences, standing back at least 6
feet so as not to risk exposure. In Echo Lake Park, families walk their
dogs, smile and nod as they pass other dog walkers on a half-mile nature
trail.
In
Crump Park, an expansive recreation area with large open fields and an
1860 living history farm, families play together in small groups,
dotting the landscape with pods of people — each yards apart from the
other, observing social distancing guidelines in the age of coronavirus.
A father and his preteen son sit by a pond fishing. Two children ride
scooters as their dad walks behind them. A family of four spreads out a
blanket and has a picnic.
“All
their activities — swimming, basketball, volleyball — they’ve all been
canceled. That opens up a lot of free time,” says Dwayne Cook, a
52-year-old mortgage broker who has been taking breaks from working at
home to go to the park with his two children, Cameron, 14, and Corinne,
12.
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Cook
says he spent one trip teaching his kids how to skip rocks in a stream.
He and his son also had a pull-up contest on the playground.
“It’s nice to be outside, get some sun and leave the phones in the car,” he says.
Fifty
yards away, two kites bob high above a hill. Brett and Teresa Hobbs are
teaching their two daughters, ages 7 and 11, about the gift of a
perfect afternoon breeze.
“For our family, it’s given us more time to talk,” says Teresa Hobbs, a kindergarten teacher.
In
a cozy subdivision called Winterberry, Meg and Dan Tully have been
trying to come up with ways to balance working at home with schoolwork
and the need to keep their three active boys busy. With the school
running club shut down, they’ve been taking turns leading the boys on
their usual mile run.
Dan
Tully, a telecommunications engineering manager, still dresses in
business attire for video conferences while working at home. During
occasional breaks, he kicks a soccer ball around the yard with his kids.
On one recent day off, he and his wife took the boys to a nearly empty
Twin Hickory Park and taught them the finer points of spiking and
serving a volleyball.
A
quarter-mile away, Jamie and Joe Burton and their three children are
eating dinner together every night, once a rarity with their busy
schedules. Their daughters, 12 and 9, are competitive gymnasts who used
to practice five nights a week, while their son had weekly baseball
games and practices.
Jamie
Burton, a registered nurse, still must go to work. But because the kids
are home from school and their extracurricular activities have all been
canceled, the family’s lighter schedules have opened up new
opportunities for doing things together.
“My
oldest daughter said, ‘Mom, I know this is scary and a lot of things
are going on in the world. But the one positive I see immediately is
that we’re able to spend more family time together,’” Burton says.
Burton’s
neighbor Stephanie Owens, a pharmacist, has also continued her usual
work schedule. But the kids being home from school has created extra
pockets of time. Last week, she, her brother, mother and her three sons —
12, 8 and 3 — all planted a small garden in a corner of their backyard.
“It’s
nice to be able to have more time with them,” Owens says. “Usually,
it’s get up in the morning, get ready to go to school, do homework at
night and go to bed.”
This
is, it seems, a case of circumstances helping to double down on a trend
that already exists. Liana Sayer, director of the Time Use Laboratory
at the University of Maryland, says research shows that parents have
been spending more leisure time with their children since the 1970s. She
expects that trend to only accelerate as the coronavirus continues to
disrupt daily life.
“We
have a new set of constraints now — one that is forcing people to spend
time together, not keeping them apart in the way that work schedules
and school schedule and activities’ schedules did,” Sayer says.
All
of this togetherness and free time has been a silver lining in the
coronavirus outbreak for many middle-class and affluent families. But
it’s hardly universal. Jessica Calarco, a sociology professor at Indiana
University, says the crisis hasn’t provided the same opportunities for
many working-class families, hourly workers and single parents. They’re
wondering how they are going to pay for child care and worrying about
losing their jobs as more and more businesses close.
“They
don’t have the flexibility to work at home or take an hour out of the
middle of the day to take a walk with their kids because of the other
types of pressure they may be facing,” Calarco says. “I worry about the
inequalities that are resulting from this.”
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Follow Denise Lavoie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/deniselavoie_ap
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Check out AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
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