We’re May All Be In This Together
But We’re Not All In The Same Boat
An interview with Leah Klass, creative consultant, mother of two, neighbor who is working with asylum seekers during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
We don’t always communicate well with our neighbors and with the people in the places we frequent on a daily basis, whether it’s schools or stores. I don’t think we can assume right now that everyone’s connected to the same websites or internet pages, and we’re certainly not getting the same messages from all of our governors or leadership. I feel like there’s there’s a disparity of connectedness. And there are so many people who are alone going through this alone.
A typical day before the quarantine
Before the quarantine, we would get up in the morning and everyone would get ready for school and work. My husband works at the VA Portland Medical Center, and he often leaves before everyone else does. Ee would drive to school and I would drop the girls off.
Then I would go about the many activities in my day I do lots of different community activities from volunteering at a thrift store to working to promote intergenerational relationships in the neighborhood. And I also take some neighbors who are asylum seekers to appointments or help translate for them. I would fill the time that my daughters are in school with a plethora of social activities, so I have lots of interactions with lots of different kinds of people.
The New Normal During the Quarantine
The biggest opening in our hearts at this point is a result of not seeing other people. We’re extremely social people. I lived in Latin neighborhoods on the East Coast, and I’ve lived in Latin America and Spain and Israel and I’ve lived in a lot of parts of the world where people don’t just talk to each other. They talk to each other with their hands. They touch each other. They hug and kiss hello. We’re really missing that part of our lives.
Being with Kids 24/7
We’ve seen a lot of these videos on YouTube about all kinds of people, including famous late night talk show hosts who are now sort of trying to get something done, anything done and there’s not a minute when their small children don’t run through the room screaming and shouting, or have some emotion to release all over the other family members. Whether that’s anger or frustration or happiness or anything.
For me, that’s been a challenge because my husband is still going to a job at hospital and I’m the principal caregiver here. For the kids, we have not had any schooling as of yet. So no return to school via online learning with our Portland public system. But we’ve had some intermittent phone calls, like Zoom calls with the swim team and Zoom calls with for a friend’s birthday party.
We have been managing that by making a schedule. Even if we’re not sticking to all the items on the schedule, exactly. Like doesn’t have to be half hour of math 1130 every day, but we’re trying to look at the schedule as a way to guide us through the day, so that the kids can be more independent in managing their own time. And so that they’re not always looking to me for the answer of what they should be doing.
It’s Hard on Kids Too
What do you think the hardest part is for your kids?
I think my kids really miss their peers. They really miss their interaction with other adults who they trust their teachers, their friends.
They miss being able to talk about things with someone other than their parents. They miss like playing outside at the park, and having other options of children to play make believe with or, you know, screen out to.Their natural tendency is to gravitate towards other humans. We live on a cul-de-sac, and we do see other kids riding their bikes. My kids just want to run over and talk to them.
I feel like they can’t leave them to do that unsupervised, at least not the front yard unsupervised because I don’t want them to go within that six feet of social distance. And that’s really sad.
The Impact the Pandemic is having on Asylum Seekers
During the last year or so we have met through our elementary school setting, we’ve met a number of families who’ve come into the country as asylum seekers fleeing violence and starvation in their home country, some of those being from Guatemala and Honduras.
They are not always given any access to social benefits. The people who I work with as a volunteer, I help connect them to the teachers at the school so that so that if there’s a language barrier, they can still provide their children with the material and the understanding of what’s happening, when they get home.
I help them connect with other programs. In some cases in the state of Oregon, a lot of asylum seeking children can qualify for the Oregon Health Plan, even though their parents don’t, which is good because that means the children can get vaccinated, can get dental care, they can go to school as healthy participants of our society.
I’ve helped those families in our immediate neighborhood meet doctors and make appointments and figure out what the rules are for living well in America, so that they can have a good life here.
Since this quarantine, a lot of them who had worked in jobs like in restaurants, washing dishes have lost all of their income. One thing I did when restaurants first started closing, was I got calls from local neighbor who work in some of those restaurants. They said, hey, we’ve got a larder full of 10 gallons of milk. We have a lot of food we can’t give to the Food Bank because it’s not individually labeled. We hear that you know people in the neighborhood who might appreciate having something extra in their fridge right now.
So I help collect that food and distribute it probably within a half mile radius of my house, where I know that there are people in need. I’ve also connected with the local elementary school PTA, so that as they look to reallocate some of their event funding, they’re thinking about how they could use those dollars to help the community that may have immediate needs.
I work with them to try and make sure that the messaging they’re sending out is considerate of people’s need for confidentiality and also doesn’t assume that just because you live in a neighborhood where people’s lawns are manicured, doesn’t mean that people living in the neighborhood are not need.
Finding Creative Solutions
I’ve helped some other people do some bartering in our neighborhood. We have neighbors who again, don’t have their restaurant dishwashing jobs anymore. Some neighbors don’t feel comfortable hiring them. So they are trading. Let’s say, clearing the garden or planting a vegetable bed for food that will feed the family of those people who are doing that work.
Part of the way that I can be creative is to help my neighbors recognize that helping other people does doesn’t have to be complicated or bureaucratic. You can help someone else just by seeing that they have, especially in the current situation an immediate need. If there’s something that you can give, and that they can give, it can feel like a really fair trade.
Not Everyone Is In The Same Boat
Because of my work connecting people in the neighborhood with others and with resources. I know a lot of people who work an hourly wage jobs, whether it’s at the dry cleaner, or at the subway sandwich shop, or in any number of hourly jobs, and a lot of those people are now jobless.
A lot of them are living paycheck to paycheck, not by any fault of their own, but because rents are so high and because we have a lot of expenses in this part of the world. Now they’re not even sure who to turn to.
The Need for Human Connection
We don’t always communicate well with our neighbors and with the people in the places we frequent on a daily basis, whether it’s schools or stores.
Even in the past couple of years, I’ve worked on a project where I’m trying to teach people to put down their phone and look someone else in the eye and say hello. What seems like a very simple action of looking at someone and taking a deep breath, and with that outward breath to look at this other person and take the time to say, how are you doing today?
Those human connections are so necessary to taking the next step, which is asking someone what they need or how you could help them, or asking them for help if you need it.
I don’t think we can assume right now that everyone’s connected to the same websites or internet pages, and we’re certainly not getting the same messages from all of our governors or leadership. I feel like there’s there’s a disparity of connectedness. And there are so many people who are alone going through this alone.
I think that just as big of a deficit as food and salary and health care is not having enough admirers and friends and support in your personal life.
Listen to the full interview here:
