National

"Are you muted?" The first thing my five-year-old learned in kindergarten, set up at a tiny desk in the corner of our dining room, is to always stay muted. It's probably the wrong thing to teach a child, but not everyone remembers, and then life bleeds in. Zoom school becomes a portal into worlds you never see as a parent making awkward smalltalk at pickup. You can hear a mom working a job doing collections for medical billing. Call after call. A dad who calls his sister on speakerphone. They fight most days. Grandparents asking how long it’s going to take. There are babies wailing.