ENFIELD — To make her grandparents’ house feel more like home during the seven weeks she lived there, Scarlette Bates arranged her books, stuffed animals and pillows in a corner of their living room to create a library.
Eight-year-old Scarlette is working her way through the sixth Harry Potter book. She also has a collection of Berenstain Bears books, as well as a stack of assorted titles her school librarian put together for her because she missed having books to hold. The third grader at Hanover Street School in Lebanon loves to read.
“I’ve got piles of books,” Scarlette said in one of several interviews by phone and video chat in recent weeks. “I don’t really like playing with toys. I mostly like reading and being outside.”
Those activities have continued amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but Scarlette’s location has shifted. As a health precaution, she moved to her grandparents’ home in Enfield as the Bates family joined millions of others in adjusting to a world where daily hugs and snuggles with a working parent were no longer the norm.
Outdoors, Scarlette has gotten to know the dogs in her grandparents’ Enfield neighborhood. She enjoyed riding her bike and, as winter changed to spring, making mud pies sprinkled with fresh worms. She also left colorfully painted rocks as gifts for the neighbors, who are mostly retired and have welcomed her with activities such as a progressive Easter egg hunt.
Scarlette’s move into her grandparents’ blue ranch-style home on Birch Lane on March 28 meant that she was living apart from her dad Brian, who works in environmental services at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, for seven weeks. While Scarlette keeps in touch with her mother, 32-year-old Brian has sole custody.
“I miss my dad,” she said.
As the number of COVID-19 cases in the Upper Valley increased in late March, Gov. Chris Sununu issued a stay-at-home order and the schools and CCBA’s after-school program closed, the Bateses realized that Scarlette would need to spend most days with her grandparents, Maura and Dick Bates. Brian continued to work at DHMC, the facility where the region’s sickest patients are often treated. On Friday, there were six active cases of COVID-19 at DHMC, according to spokeswoman Audra Burns.
Given Maura’s and Dick’s ages, 63 and 69, they are in a higher-risk group for developing serious symptoms should they contract COVID-19, the respiratory disease first identified late last year in Wuhan, China.
As a janitor and housekeeper at DHMC, Brian said he sometimes cleans COVID-19 patients’ rooms. When he does so, he wears protective garb including a gown and face shield, but he still feared he might be at a higher risk of picking up the virus there. The family decided it would be best to have Scarlette make the move to Enfield for a time.
“I don’t like it though,” Brian said in a phone interview from his home in Lebanon earlier this month. “I want my kid back.”
While Scarlette understands that she had to stay with her grandparents because her dad might pick up a virus at work that could make them all sick, she doesn’t like to talk about the separation or how it makes her feel. In one video chat, she hid off screen when the subject came up. Maura said Scarlette asked questions such as “Why did this have to happen (and) ruin everything?”
Scarlette has a counselor who has been working with her remotely during the separation, Maura said. But Brian said Scarlette called him nightly, saying that she wanted to come home. He said he plans to take some time off from work this summer to have some extra time with Scarlette and her 10-year-old half brother Jaiden, who lives in Bradford, Vt., with his great aunt and uncle.
Scarlette, who first met Jaiden last year, has become close with him. During the pandemic, the two have kept in touch by exchanging a book they made. In it, they trade messages, drawings and jokes including some about potatoes, which are apparently Jaiden’s favorite tuber.
Earlier this month, they were able to meet up in the parking lot of Oxbow Union High School in Bradford to go for a bike ride together. They planned to do something similar this weekend.
In addition to missing her father and adjusting to a new home, Scarlette is navigating the world of remote learning. Like many children around the Upper Valley and beyond, Scarlette, who reached out to the Valley News when it was seeking to interview students about not being in school, misses her friends since schools have moved to remote instruction.
She keeps up with them and her dad, brother and other relatives through an app called Kids Messenger, which her grandparents in Enfield allowed her to use for about half an hour each day. In addition, to letting users share text messages, it also has drawing features and games, which Scarlette demonstrated during one video chat.
During Scarlette’s stay with them, Maura and Dick worked to give her days structure. Maura is a retired teacher, who taught first grade in Enfield for 30 years. Her skills have come in handy now that she has been assisting her granddaughter with her lessons. Scarlette has a small table where she has been storing her school work. She does much of the work on a laptop on the kitchen counter.
Scarlette said she misses the way her Hanover Street School teacher Cassie Spaulding used to put on music during math class while they were doing their work, as well as the prizes Spaulding used to give out. Now, the format of the math course is more of a lecture-style, which she finds less engaging. Though she can see her classmates and teacher through their screens, it’s harder to interact with them.
Math class is Scarlette’s least favorite subject. But, of course, she likes the reading assignments and has been enjoying learning about planets. She was assigned Saturn and learned that it “rains diamonds.”
It’s not the same as in-person classes, but the Bateses said they’ve been impressed with how quickly teachers made the transition and how well they’ve done staying connected with the children.
Spaulding “does a great job of engaging all the kids,” Dick Bates said.
The Lebanon teacher offers a virtual social time for the kids to connect outside of their academic work, as well as one-on-one meetings for those who need extra help, he said.
Scarlette’s learning has not been confined to academics. While her previous visits to her grandparents’ home have been for weekends and overnights, during the extended stay Maura said Scarlette has been learning some “life skills” such as how to prepare her own breakfast, do the dishes and wash the laundry.
Scarlette doesn’t enjoy all those tasks, but she does like cooking and said she was planning to make her father brownies for his 33rd birthday on Monday.
For Maura and Dick, who are both retired, the seven-week return to full-time parenting wasn’t without its challenges. Dick co-owned an insurance agency in Newport.
“It can be hard not having any downtime,” Maura said.
She also noted that Scarlette’s things tended to fill up the house, making it feel more cluttered than it normally would.
But the time has allowed them to connect in new ways. On-screen banter during video chats with the family included Scarlette dishing out fashion advice to her grandmother. While polka dots are fashionable, “not your polka dot jammie pants,” she told Maura.
She later objected to Maura’s directions for how to use a toy included in a play pack delivered by the Lebanon Parks and Recreation Department.
“Kids know more about their toys,” she said.
But the grandparents can see beyond the mess and pushback.
“As difficult as these times are, there’s been a lot of joy here too,” Dick said.
On Mother’s Day, Scarlette woke up early, decorated the house and made Maura breakfast. She made an envelope that says, “Never ending ways that I love my Grandma” on the front, and filled it with coupons and reasons she loves Maura.
While they were living separately, Scarlette and her father were able to get together on Brian’s days off from work. They spent time outside flying kites, playing basketball and going for walks. But it’s not the same as living together. And even when they were together, Brian tried to keep his distance, giving air hugs.
“Once in a while I’ll sneak a regular hug in because she really wants it and needs it,” he said.
Brian said he worries that the pandemic has had the effect of separating families. While he was able to adjust to the physical distancing and air hugs to a degree, he said, “It still hurts. I think it keeps families away from each other.”
While the Bates family’s challenges are unique to them, they are not alone in facing difficulties during this time. Hanover Street School families have had a wide range of experiences during the pandemic, said school counselor Robin Abendroth.
Being a Lebanon school, Hanover Street has several families in which at least one parent is employed at DHMC. As front-line workers have continued to do their jobs, Abendroth said some families like the Bateses have turned to grandparents for child care, potentially putting those caregivers at risk.
“I think that the virus has created a lot of family challenges,” she said.
While area most families have not been directly affected by COVID-19, they have been affected by the changed economy and the school closures. The children themselves may not understand what the virus is, but if staying home will keep their family safe, then they will do so “bravely,” Abendroth said.
In the best-case scenarios, Abendroth said, “Some families embrace this as, ‘This is an opportunity I’ll never get again.’ ”
Though the effects of all these changes on individual children are varied, and those with parents or guardians to give their days structure are likely to fare better, Abendroth predicted it will be a long “reintegration” period once in-person classes resume.
Aside from getting a stomach bug a few weeks ago, Brian has been healthy, as has the rest of the family. Given that the numbers of new COVID-19 cases in the region have slowed and the surge DHMC was preparing for didn’t arrive, Scarlette moved back in with Brian on Friday night.
“It was awesome,” Brian said Saturday of the reunion. “She couldn’t be happier.”
The flattening of the curve in the region gave the family license to get Scarlette’s life closer to normal, closer to her father.
“It feels a lot safer now,” Maura said. “The numbers in the Upper Valley haven’t been bad at all.”
With school and the CCBA after-school program still closed, some summer camps canceled and others uncertain, Scarlette will now be going back and forth between her father’s home and her grandparents’ on the days he works.
But Maura said the family might revisit the issue in the future.
“If things change in the Upper Valley, we will most likely all decide to have her stay here again,” she said.
Brian said he feels lucky to have his parents nearby and able to help. Without them, he said, “I probably would have had to have either cut back on the hours or change my shift schedule,” as some of his co-workers with kids now at home have had to do.
Among the things Scarlette was looking forward to about going home to their Lebanon apartment were redecorating her bedroom and getting back to her reading nook, a closet decorated with silver Christmas lights.
Another priority after moving back in with Brian will be to “hug him,” she said.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
