March 30, 2020

I’m a Nola native — grew up in Metairie, and was in my early 20s when Katrina hit. The days, weeks, months, and even a year after felt like life had paused. Today, living through this quasi-quarantine is like waiting for your kid to get to the punchline of a joke you’ve heard a hundred times before. Time isn’t paused, it’s moving very slowly and you’re taking precautions so that it doesn’t last any longer.

It’s Day Six as I’m writing this — counting from March 13 when Gov. Edwards closed all public schools. I’m still struggling with how to manage it all in my head. How am I supposed to switch my brain between “Louisiana has 347 known coronavirus cases, 8 deaths” and “Biden wins Illinois primary, widening lead over Sanders?” Published days apart, the latter headline reminds me that life is still happening; we still have things to do. The former headline is too ominous to ignore.

We’re stuck somewhere in between. Life at home is relatively normal. Still, there’s this underlying notion that it may all go to hell and no amount of toilet paper will save us.

In this uncertain mess, I hope that Nola Family offers a continuous hopeful and helpful message. As a parenting magazine, we have a unique opportunity to focus our content on the everyday lives of our readers. As we were wrapping up the April issue, which is only available digitally, we decided to hold a few planned features to include more prudent topics relating to home life during this time.

You’ll notice some regular content is missing, too. April’s “In the Know” and “Out & About” were scrapped because, well, everything is canceled.

We’ve also created “Nola Family’s Group for Parents Navigating the ‘New Norm‘” Facebook group for local parents to share ideas, concerns, and of course, memes while we adjust. Our new “Daily Survival Guide” newsletter offers fun activities and useful information so that you don’t resort to burning down the house just to shake things up.

Remember, we’re navigating this “new norm,” too, but taking it day by day is the only way to stay sane when you’re suddenly teaching common core math to your own kids.

Here’s to staying relatively normal,
Tim Meyer