Jill Dumont relaxed her standards, just a bit. On her second pandemic visit to her daughter’s home in West Bridgewater recently, she didn’t put up the stop sign when her granddaughters, Norah, 5, and Amelia, 2, rushed up and hugged her leg.
There was no reciprocating hug for the girls, who, Dumont said, remain confused by the COVID-19-related restrictions on everyday public and private life.
It hasn’t necessarily been easy to be a grandparent for the last three months. Lockdowns and social distancing regulations and suggestions, coupled with the fact that the elderly are a COVID-19 high-risk group, has given birth to a subpandemic — grandparent-grandchild separation sadness.
“It’s been tough,” Dumont, 58, a Durfee High graduate, the coordinator of health services at Bristol Community College, and a confessed longtime germaphobe, said of losing time with her granddaughters. “We’re real close to them. My husband and I see them all the time.”
For the Dumonts, the grandparent-grandchild bond has, in past years, been extra tight in the summer, with Dumont’s oldest daughter’s family spending almost every weekend at Jill and husband Mark’s Westport home, which includes an in-law apartment. Those visits have featured frequent trips to the beach. But there has been just one Westport visit in 2020, and it did not include a Horseneck run. This weekend, Jill said, they may finally take the West Bridgewater crew to the beach.
The Dumonts did not visit West Bridgewater for the first roughly two-and-a-half months of the stay-at-home order. They’ve visited twice in the last couple of weeks. No hugging. No kissing. Just the received leg hug for Jill.
FaceTime, Dumont said, has been a “lifesaver,” but sometimes on FaceTime her granddaughters start to cry. “They want to come over. They want to sleep over,” she said. “They want to know when the virus will go away.”
Lockdown meant an immediate and radical change in the lives of grandparents Fran and Beth Brough of Fall River, both retired teachers. For the last six years, they have combined to babysit for their grandchild (and then grandchildren) three or four days a week. That came to a screeching halt in March. And it wasn’t easy to deal with.
“When you babysit that often,” said Fran, a former track and field coach at Durfee High School, “you establish a relationship with the children that’s really close.”
The Broughs' daughter Jamie has a son Landon, 7, and a daughter Logan, 2. Jamie and her husband live in Stoughton. He’s been able to work at home. Jamie works in genetic testing at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, magnifying their already serious COVID-19 concerns.
After much FaceTiming, Fran and Beth ended the in-person drought a month ago with a stay-in-your-car parking-lot meeting in Stoughton. With the Phase 2 lightening of restrictions, the Broughs were able to start visiting Jamie’s home in Stoughton. Things there are just about back to normal.
On one of the first visits, Grandma and Grandpa finally got to give Landon and Logan a hug, albeit with the grandchildren wrapped in blankets.
“That was a transition. You miss doing hugs," Brough said. "Both of them like to read. When you read with them, you sit close to each other. It’s the little things you take for granted.”
Mary Ann McDonald of Somerset, widow of the late and highly respected Somerset High School teacher and coach Ray McDonald Sr., has eight grandsons and one granddaughter, with their residences in Somerset, Portsmouth, New York and California. "It is so difficult," she said. "I love them all dearly and I miss them."
She's taken COVID-19 very seriously and was ahead of the game in stay-at-home. McDonald has not been inside a building, except her house, since the end of February.
In person, she has seen (with distance) only her three Somerset grandchildren, Liam, Kayleigh and Brendan. When weather permitted in March and April, they met on the deck at her house. With better weather in May and June, she expanded her social life to Sunday afternoon visits to son Ray Jr.'s Somerset home where they sit on the farmer's porch. Known to her grandchildren as Mem-Mem, McDonald brings treats — chocolate chip cookies, ice cream — to the porch sessions.
For her birthday in April, Ray Jr.'s family treated Mem-Mem to a two-car parade and a group sing of happy birthday from the back lawn as she watched from the deck.
As she leaves the Sunday get-togethers, her grandchildren give her virtual hugs. She anxiously awaits the day when they can get back to the real thing.
"Sometimes I do feel sad," McDonald said. "But I'm glad for what I have. I'm glad there's such a thing as FaceTime. I'm glad we have adjusted the way we have to keep in touch with one another."
Glenn Chatterton, retired Fall River public schools physical education teacher and former Durfee High baseball coach, and his wife, Susan, had to endure a long hiatus from seeing their grandsons Luke, 5, and Owen, 2, who live in Andover.
“It’s been tough,” Chatterton, a Fall River resident, said. “You look forward to seeing your grandchildren. It’s been lonely without my grandchildren.”
The Chattertons were blessed when a friend asked them to babysit his 2-year-old twins three days a week. “That kind of fills the void,” he said.
After almost three months of mega-FaceTiming, Glenn and Susan visited son Matt’s Andover home for a cookout. He’s hoping in the next few weeks, in Phase 3 of the state’s reopening, Luke and Owen can visit their grandparents in Fall River.
Jennifer and Bill Goncalo’s first grandchild, Raegan, was born about a week before the family went into COVID-19 quarantine, so the grandparents got see her only briefly in hospital. Once in quarantine, Bill went about three weeks without seeing his granddaughter, except for views through a storm door at son Evan’s house.
Jennifer managed to shortcut her separation. “ After a couple of weeks … Jen moved in with them … to help out and avail herself of Nana privilege,” Bill said in a Facebook message.
In the meantime he said he got to run the household for adult children Nate, John and Katie, with the latter two doing their online college work at Regis and Brandeis, respectively.
After a few more weeks, the Goncalo quarantine circle was expanded to include family and in-laws.
Dave Driscoll, and his wife, Lisa, are making up for lost time with their three grandsons, two in North Attleboro and one in Stoneham.
“Both sets of parents were able to work from home and the boys, early on, just stayed at home, as did my wife and I,” Driscoll, the Somerset resident and retired teacher/coach at Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School, wrote in a text. “We FaceTimed with them every day so we never lost touch. As [Massachusetts] has started to open up, we have seen them on a regular basis, watched them when needed and taken them to the beach several times.”
But those first two months were difficult, though separation was not 100 percent. The Driscolls went to the North Attleboro house when the parents had to take one of the boys for a doctor’s appointment. “The Stoneham area early on was a hot bed for the virus so when we finally saw our grandson, it was at a distance and with a mask,” Driscoll said. “We have since taken him to the beach. Hope the social distancing for the family is a thing of the past.”
Email Greg Sullivan at gsullivan@heraldnews.com. Follow him @GregSullivanHN.