I knew that our kids would not be back in school this year once they were out for spring break.

But hearing Missouri Gov. Mike Parson make it official recently still hit hard. Our schools will be closed for the rest of the year, and students will only have access to online learning.

Governors have made the same difficult decision in states across the country.

I knew this was coming, and I still wasn’t prepared for how crushing it felt. The emotions around it are multifold.

I’m worried about kids who won’t be getting the meals they need for months, especially since meal service provided by bus has been discontinued in several districts. Food pantries are trying to keep up with skyrocketing demand and dwindling reserves.

I’m scared for kids who live in abusive homes, who have no temporary escape. Parental stress and anxiety make abusive situations worse, and everyone is feeling the strain of being locked in.

I’m heartbroken for the high school seniors who won’t have a prom or graduation, or one last goodbye with all their teachers and friends. Their disappointment is completely valid.

I’m anxious about how far behind kids without access to internet, devices or parental supervision will fall. These months will widen the opportunity gaps children from underserved communities already face.

And I’m sad that all our children have lost part of their childhood. I had been warning my children for the past month that it was unlikely that they would go back to school. Secretly, though, I think we held a flicker of hope in our hearts that it might happen -- even if just for a day or two, to get some closure on the year.

I asked my son, a freshman in high school, what he thought about the news.

“I’m not really surprised,” he said. “I guess it’s good they are doing it.” He knows the importance of “flattening the curve” because we’ve been talking about it incessantly.

Of course, this was a necessary and critical decision to save people’s lives and prevent overwhelming the medical system. Our stiff-upper-lip child gets that. But his voice gave away the disappointment I knew he must be feeling. When his tennis season was canceled before it even began, we congratulated him on an undefeated season, and he actually smiled at the lame joke. But I wish I could have watched him play, even just once.

Then I asked my daughter, a junior, how she felt.

“I don’t think anyone is adjusting well to it,” she said. “I feel bad for our teachers because they had to switch to (online learning) so quickly. As a student, I really miss my friends and activities I do outside of school. I even miss just being in and learning in the classroom.”

That part -- just sitting in a classroom, learning from the people around you -- they know we can’t give them at home. I wonder what conversations, thoughts and ideas they won’t experience. Education is a life-enriching experience, and that learning happens from more than just assignments and reading. It happens in the interactions with teachers and coaches, between peers, and even in social settings with friends. The life experience of interacting with people in various roles and from different walks of life is how our children practice vital social and emotional skills and gain knowledge during these formative years.

I’m sure we will all get through this the best we can, and I hope school leaders will work hard to help children in the most difficult circumstances.

But I’m taking a moment to grieve the loss of these months of learning, friendship and memories for our children.

It’s a part of their childhood we can’t replace.

In the alternate-reality version of this weekend, my husband and I would be at an elaborate Indian-Nepalese wedding in Minneapolis.

A former colleague would be getting married. It would be my first visit to Minnesota, and I had planned to see a few lakes and sample a tater tot hot-dish. Before we left, I would have asked my daughter about the ACT she’d have taken.

Earlier in the week, our family would have joined in one of our favorite traditions: going to the Passover Seder at Sally and Dick’s home. When they were younger, my children would join the search for the hidden afikoman.

Some of you would be in special church services and gathered with your families for egg hunts and Easter dinners. I would admire the pictures you would post of your kids in their fancy clothes. My favorites are the ones in which the kid looks like he can’t wait to get out of his dress pants into a pair of shorts.

In our actual reality, more than a dozen people tested positive for COVID-19 at my husband’s workplace, where he still goes every day. A front-line doctor we know is on life support after getting infected. My brother, also a physician, treated a patient in an isolation ward.

Instead of talking about a summer trip we had planned to Yellowstone, we’ve talked about updating our wills.

Living through a catastrophe unlike anything we’ve experienced before is a strange roller coaster of feelings. We are hyper-aware and thankful for being alive, while scared of a lurking death, trying to sneak in on an airborne particle. We are dealing with stress that feels uniquely terrible, but is actually pretty universal right now. We all know someone who has lost a job or shuttered a business or gotten sick or is worried about the rent or buying groceries. And if we’re not among those in the most dire circumstances, we are grateful to be among the shut-ins. 

But it’s hard not to consider, however fleetingly, the alternate realities that have slipped away. For me, it’s the one in which I recently returned from New York City, where we premiered my new documentary film project, and I am planning the rest of the festival circuit. There’s another one in which we are discussing which colleges my daughter wants to visit this summer. Now, no one knows when schools might reopen or when New York City will heal and recover from the brutal attack of this pandemic.

How can a month feel like a lifetime ago?

If we’re lucky, we will get to do all the things again. We will get to hug our parents and grandparents, hang out with our friends, pray in congregations, dine in restaurants, travel without worry, shop in stocked grocery stores, attend weddings and funerals, and trust hospitals to have supplies to take care of us if we get critically sick. Even things that seemed mundane before, like sitting at my desk in an office surrounded by colleagues, will feel special for a while.

Maybe as we get further into this isolated new normal, we will forget the alternate realities that could have happened.

The dear family friend we had planned to ask to stay with our children while we attended this weekend’s wedding had taken care of them when they were babies, years ago. The wedding was canceled before we had a chance to ask her, but we reached out recently to see how she’s doing.

She had gone to the ER early in March with a severe backache. It turned out to be advanced stage breast cancer. There’s never a good time to get cancer, but this may be the worst time.

It’s a time when we want to hold the people we love tighter, but that same love forces us to keep them at a distance.

These days, I’m trying to think about the brighter spots ahead on this new timeline. The kids will be back in school in the fall. We will celebrate my friend’s wedding in Minnesota. I’ll take a meal to our friend recovering from cancer.

Everyone we love survives.

I’m praying for that reality.

The fight against the coronavirus invokes the language and imagery of war. It’s a battle, with health care workers on the front lines, the wounded dying alone, hospital ships deployed to hot zones and makeshift morgues to store the dead.

But unlike any war we’ve ever fought before, our front lines are filled with mothers. Nearly 90% of registered nurses in America are women. About a third of practicing doctors are women. They, along with their male colleagues, are being treated in ways we could never fathom our government treating soldiers in a war fought with missiles and bombs. 

There still aren’t enough tests, even though the president and vice president promised there would be. There still aren’t enough N95 masks or ventilators, despite weeks of pleading for help. As early as Feb. 5, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar asked for $2 billion to buy respirator masks and other supplies for a depleted federal stockpile of emergency medical equipment. The White House cut that request by 75%, the Washington Post reported. The coronavirus was spiking in other parts of the world then, but American leaders were still downplaying it and comparing it to the flu, as they continued to do during the most critical weeks that could have been used to contain the damage.

Let’s compare this war, where health care workers are being asked to fight under unconscionable conditions, to how our country responded the last time we were under attack.

The United States has spent more than $2 trillion on its war on terror just through the Department of Defense spending. More people in America have now died of COVID-19 than were killed in the attacks on Sept. 11. The Defense Production Act -- which the New York Times reported has been used hundreds of thousands of times in the Trump years to speed production of chemicals used to construct military missiles, procure materials needed to build drones, and order body armor for border-patrol agents -- was sidelined for too long in a war against a virus now projecting to kill hundreds of thousands of us. Despite the willingness to use the act for military supplies, the president became reluctant to use it to compel production of desperately needed medical supplies.

Why didn’t this war fought in American emergency rooms mobilize the same sense of urgency, the same resources, as the wars fought in Middle Eastern deserts?

Explain that to Dr. Christie Pickrell, an ER doctor at Mercy Hospital in St. Louis and EMS medical director for the Mehlville Fire Department. Her husband is also a physician. They have three children, ages 6, 3 and 1.

Their baby had a fever for five days, and they tried to get him tested for COVID-19. Their pediatrician told them to call the hospital COVID hotline to set up testing, but they were told he didn’t qualify, despite being in a household with two physicians with known exposure. They had to cancel their child care, because they were told to presume their baby is COVID positive. They rearranged their work schedules, but are still expected to go into work.

“None of this makes sense,” Pickrell said. “Right now, because the number of cases in Missouri are grossly underreported, I’m truly scared for the public.”

People don’t realize how many patients they are sending home with symptoms, without testing, and telling them to assume they are positive, she said.

“I’ve never felt so helpless” as a doctor, she said. “I took a Hippocratic oath to take care of people. That’s what I signed up for. But when my son has a fever, what about my own family? Why can’t I take care of them?”

It wasn’t until 2013 that the Secretary of Defense removed the military’s long-standing ban on women serving in combat. In this war against coronavirus, the CDC has said health care workers, some of whom are single mothers with babies at home, can resort to bandanas and scarves if they can’t get the protective equipment they need. Imagine our government telling Marines in a war zone to fashion their own helmets and weapons.

Nevertheless, health care “soldiers” continue to show up. Pickrell, who is 35, said she has offered to take the riskier procedures, like putting patients on ventilators, from her older male colleagues, whose age and gender makes them more vulnerable to complications if they become infected.

In this war, a young mom with sick children at home is protecting the older male doctors in her department by risking her own life.

And our country can’t promise her a clean respirator or a COVID test for her babies.