“You’ve got to help me!” Maureen said.

My sister runs a speech therapy practice in Los Angeles. When the pandemic hit, she worked night and day to keep providing services and keep her clinicians employed.

At the same time, her daughter Abby started virtual learning. A super-smart girl, my niece figured out she could hit “submit” for an assignment without attaching any work, and her mom would never know. From Maureen’s perspective, all these assignments had been “submitted.” Trouble was, there was “no work attached.” So, shortly after Spring Break, it came to my sister’s attention that Abby had amassed 101 Missing Assignments.

Abby and I set out to complete the assignments, “Bird by Bird,” as Anne Lamott would say. Turned out, it wasn’t that bad. Taking each assignment, one at a time, we quickly caught up. “See how fast it goes,” I said, “when you just sit down to do it? Wouldn’t it be better to do one little assignment every single day? Think of how much work you could get done!”

Still learning, after all these years.

Margaret South

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