Jeff Dennis recalled the last time he picked his daughter up from school. She left second grade for spring break with her school-assigned laptop.
“At that point, there was sort of this, ‘Oh, we’re going to do this just in case,’” Dennis said.
A few days later, the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Lubbock.
“We stopped sending our son to daycare, and obviously school never returned,” Dennis said. “So we basically started structuring our new, our new existence from that point on.”
That was six months ago - and while the rest of Lubbock has reopened, the Dennises are still hunkered down in their home.
“It definitely felt like we might be in it for the long haul this time in March,” Dennis said. “But I didn’t really know what that looked like. Because none of us had ever done it.”
Dennis is an assistant professor of public health at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. His background is in sociology and he specifically studies how social factors relate to health. He said he started to seriously worry about COVID-19 in February. But so little was known about the virus then.
“I had no foundation to think about what that meant for Lubbock, Texas and for my own life, my own family,” he said.
Dennis and his wife, who’s a counselor, both work from home now. Their now-third grader is doing school virtually and their 3-year-old is home, too.
Back-to-school necessitated a change from their more-free summer routine. Dennis said he gets his daughter up and ready for online school by 8 a.m.
“I’ve got alarms set on my phone for every class period that she has to log-on with her teacher and be ready just to make sure I don’t miss anything,” he said.
Both parents attend virtual meetings throughout the day. Dennis said he feels like he’s constantly checking and sending emails, and he saves work that requires more concentration for naptime or nighttime.
The parents try to make sure the kids aren’t looking at a screen all day.
“We’ll try to get out and I can take meetings outside,” Dennis said.
The day ends, then another starts. Monday through Sunday – Dennis said each day is kind of the same.
The weekends offer some relaxation – maybe even more than before the pandemic. Instead of spending Sunday afternoons going store-to-store for errands, the family now has essentials delivered or order online for pick up.
“I think it’s improved the amount of quality time we can spend, instead of just we have two days to get everything done that we couldn’t do during the week,” Dennis said.
Dennis said he doesn’t really know when his family will venture back into the world. He said they’re in a privileged position right now, and staying home is a way to help others who don’t have that option.
After a late-summer lull, COVID-19 cases again shot up in Lubbock this month, recently reaching the mark of 10,000 total confirmed infections. As the flu season also starts, city and health officials are asking people to continue to follow the same precautions they have for months and avoid gatherings.
Got a tip? Email Sarah Self-Walbrick at saselfwa@ttu.edu. Follow her reporting on Twitter @SarahfromTTUPM. If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support local non-profit journalism. Thanks for donating today.
