A letter to COVID-19

Hello!

In this summer, my children’s school recommended writing or math support at home. I chose writing assignment and have given my children a topic a day everyday when they are with me.

My children are 10 year old twins (boy and girl). They write little less than two pages a day in this summer.

The reason why the school recommended was based on some concern that remote learning system might have been shorted to meet the standard expectation due to the unique circumstance.

We unfortunately had to find that those children cut the on-line classes and visited irrerevant websites like Youtube or heavily chatted with their friends on the usage of their lap-tops.

It was a stressful time for the children under the lockdown situation while they found the world about playing with their friends at school.

I surely felt that they would need some help on it so I committed to look at their writing in this summer.

When they can use their laptop, they tend to drift to the other websites so I prepared paper, pencil to write and also paper dictionary to check the spelling.

I planned to look at their hand writing, grammar and also spelling too.

I am so glad that we did this in this summer. Not only they improved their writing but also depending on the topic, I had opportunities to understand my children in depth or in different perspectives too and even found hidden talents too.

It was some kind of work that I had to check their writing everyday but I gained much more than my own efforts on it.

I am a professional writer too published my books in Japan and the US in both languages so I should be qualified with a duty to check 4th graders’ writing.

It was much more interesting than I ever expected. I liked my topic for them to write a letter to COVID-19 so I decided to write a letter to COVID-19 too in this occasion.

Here is my letter to COVID-19.

Dear COVID-19,

I want you to know that we are in the awkward relationships here within us such as you take away our freedom to travel around or meeting with others.

I need to tell you that we wouldn’t appreciate your effects on us. We had never had this kind of situation at least long time.

We know that long time ago in the era when fatal diseases like you attacked us humans in Europe and a lot of people died and time to time, we have kinds of situation that flu or anything like that attacked us and killed some of us.

However the current situation is out of potion. We don’t like it at all. Our economy slowed down a lot and a lot of people lost their jobs.

We hope that you will understand what kind of impact that we are talking about here. I have to say that no one welcomed you in the sense.

Especially elderly or youth are the victims of you and how do you feel about the fact? Is that your personality to attack vulnerable ones like them?

If it is, we wouldn’t pay any respects to you any day in our lives. I want you to know that your doing is nasty on us if it is fatal or not in the level.

A lot of people who suffer or die so please stop this pandemic.

Not only that, this lockdown gives us a lot of effects such as economic downfalls as I mentioned.

But also our stress level is so high. Do you know that 30 % higher domestic abuse level in Mexico?

I say, shame on you! You should stop your doings.

I say whatever takes, we will try to eliminate you but please don’t take it personally. If you decide to leave voluntarily, we’d appreciated with your right doing.

At last, you should understand that you took away the opportunity from our children to learn together at school.

They miss the school and friends in this occasion, we want you to know it.

Please leave us alone as soon as possible for good.

Very Truly,

Mitsu Emig

I will talk about more in tomorrow’s column.

Have a wonderful day!!