Tyra Johnson had been planning for the first day of school at home for weeks. She ordered workbooks and a sling book rack online. She transformed a 50-square-foot corner of her living room into a learning nook for her preschooler, Madison, and first-grader, Meegale.

Johnson, 30, had the tablet and password ready to log in for Meegale’s virtual schooling. The newborn, Mason, would sleep in a baby carrier she would wear all day while teaching the other two. Her 10-year-old niece would also be staying with her in her north St. Louis apartment.

“I have a first-grader,” she says with a laugh, as if she can hardly believe it. She points out that her son actually reads on a grade level higher than his age.

Both of the children have been out of school since mid-March, with their mom trying to find ways to keep their education on track despite the challenges of losing her job and living in a neighborhood with frequent gunfire. She doesn’t let her children go outside the apartment to play; they spend most nights at Johnson’s mom’s house across the river, because it feels safer to her.

I’ve been checking in with her since the spring, but the first time we met in person was in late August -- the day before the new school year was scheduled to start. Meegale was trying to put together a safe out of discarded cardboard boxes, and recruited me to help him. He searched on YouTube for how-to videos for his project, then looked outside his window. A few kids were hanging out on the street below.

“Those are hoodlum kids,” he said. What made him think so, I asked?

“Because they outside by themselves. Only grownups can protect kids. Kids can’t protect themselves,” he said.

There are bullet holes in the wall in Meegale’s room and in the short hallway outside the room.

The next day started rough. The kids stayed up too late and had trouble waking up. Both came downstairs cranky and tired.

Johnson was trying to get breakfast on the table, moving the stack of delivered groceries out of the way, feeding Mason and cleaning up a few spills. A knock on the back door meant it was time to take the trash out.

She was fixing Madison’s hair with one hand and trying to call Meegale’s school with the other.

For some reason, she couldn’t log him into his virtual class. She kept getting an error message on the tablet, and a busy signal or voicemail at the school.

This day was nothing like she had planned for weeks.

She pulled out the kids’ workbooks and told them to work on the matching exercises. Meegale lay down on the floor to rest. After a few minutes of teaching, the kids were upset and crying.

“By the fact that you didn’t go to sleep,” she said to Meegale, “and you didn’t go to sleep,” she said to Madison, “this is the aftereffect. That means, the next time I tell you to go to sleep, you go to sleep, OK?”

There was a day earlier that year when Meegale got to put on his school uniform: a navy shirt and pants. His mom had agreed to let him go back for in-person learning in St. Louis Public Schools. When she picked him up after his first day there, he talked about seeing his friends and teacher again.

But then Madison caught a cold, and Johnson had a sinus infection. Her fears about contracting COVID -- despite their months of isolation -- spiked again.

After three days of in-person school, she decided it was safer for him to stay home.

They were all sitting together in their living room last month when shots fired into her apartment again.

She and Meegale hit the ground.

They packed up some clothes and left that day for her mom’s, and haven’t been back since. She’s still paying rent at the apartment they fled. She’s now working two jobs, trying to find her family a permanent new home.

Meegale still talks about the safe we tried to build.

Some families attract long traditions and happy coincidences.

The Jacksons seem to be one of those families.

Emma Ortbals Werner sewed a baptismal gown for her first grandchild, Ann, in 1951. The long white gown was trimmed with simple lace around the neckline and sleeves, with a border along the bottom. Her daughter, Alice Jackson, embroidered Ann’s name into the border.

Alice and Mark Jackson went on to have nine more children -- each of whom wore the same gown at their christenings.

By the time the youngest child had worn it, grandchildren from the eldest children weren’t far behind. The dress naturally got passed down to them.

“It was just kind of a given, I suppose,” said Mary O’Brien, the fifth in the family to wear the gown.

Mark and Alice Jackson moved to Webster Groves, Missouri, after their first child was born, and the rest of the kids grew up there. They all attended Catholic schools. Most of them have stayed in the area and raised their own families there.

Ann Paradoski, the first to wear the gown, is now 69 and still lives in Webster Groves. She said her husband wasn’t too thrilled with their son wearing a dress at his christening -- although a gown is traditional -- but he gave in.

Alice Jackson kept adding names to the border of the gown with each additional child who wore it. When a few of the names began repeating in the next generation, she added the last name.

A couple of times, the birth of twins presented a dilemma.

Patty Gaines, 61, who also wore the family gown, said it was a difficult decision when she had twins -- a boy and a girl. Her son ended up wearing the family dress because it fit him better. Her daughter wore the original slip that went under the gown and a dress her aunt had sewn years before.

The family says there hasn’t been any pressure for babies to wear the gown over the years, and that a few parents have opted out.

Mark Jackson, 68, said his wife is an exceptional seamstress and wanted to make their children’s baptism gown herself. Their first three children wore that gown, but babies four and five ended up being twins.

The Jackson family gown came in handy again.

Fortunately, none of the babies has had any sort of accident in the dress.

“The biggest thing has been keeping it white,” Paradoski said. It’s getting more frail as the years go by.

Mary O’Brien has become the de facto keeper of the dress. She’s hoping it will make it to another generation.

Incidentally, O’Brien wore her mother’s wedding dress from 1950 when she got married in 1980. Her grandmother had sewn that, too. She’s hanging on to in the hope that it might get another wear by a niece in the future.

O’Brien’s parents, Mark and Alice Jackson, discovered a surprising connection shortly before they got married. They had brought their baptismal certificates to their meeting with the priest before the wedding. It turned out that both of them were baptized at St. Margaret of Scotland Church, even though they grew up in different parts of St. Louis.

Not only that, but they had been baptized during the same ceremony on the same day.

They loved telling that story during their 62 years of marriage.

Alice Jackson died in 2016, and her husband a year later.

In January, their great-granddaughter Sophia Lauber became the 32nd baby in the family to wear the gown made by her great-great grandmother. Her father, Andy Lauber, had worn it before her, and his mom, Ellen, before him.

Sophia’s baptism took place in January at the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.

The church is in Jackson Square.

Social media has revealed politicians in a way we couldn’t have imagined before.

A few months ago, I reached out to Jean Evans, executive director of the Missouri GOP, because I was working on a story about harassment faced by women in public office. I had talked to several Democratic elected women, and wanted to include an equal number of Republican women. I didn’t hear back from Evans at first, but she eventually said she was very busy two weeks before an election.

I had contacted 10 different Republican elected women, but none replied. After the story ran, Rep. Chrissy Sommer of the Missouri House said she had left me a voicemail. When I checked, I found her missed voicemail. I apologized, and offered to write a follow-up column with her perspective, since no Republicans had replied. She said she had not experienced any intimidation or harassment in office, and politely declined.

Weeks later, however, Evans shared on Twitter the real reason for their silence.

“You have openly expressed disdain with everyone on the right without an ounce of objectivity,” tweeted Evans. “Every single female with whom I shared your request said ‘No Way’. #ZeroCredibility”

It’s Evans’ prerogative not to want to talk to me because she disagrees with my views. I have, however, repeatedly applauded those on the right who have pushed back against the worst actions of the current administration. Perhaps those conservatives don’t count as “on the right” to the executive director of Missouri’s GOP.

I was surprised a few weeks later to see another tweet directed at me, this time from the official Missouri GOP account. (The account’s bio doesn’t reveal who runs it.)

The tweet read: “What happens when the beauty editor attempts to do politics? Hint: It ain’t pretty.”

It included an emoji of a fingernail being polished and referenced this tweet I had posted: “That the President of the United States keeps trying to illegally overturn an election to stay in power ought to be the lead story in every paper, every newscast and the main topic of conversation on every news program. That it isn’t shows just how low he’s dragged us.”

If Missouri’s GOP had a problem with this point, I wonder why didn’t they respond to that instead of dragging beauty editors. Maybe they thought calling me a beauty editor was a snarky way of diminishing my work or opinion. Unfortunately, they misjudged how much I value the work of beauty editors.

I have an amateur interest in all manner of beauty. I have written about mascaras, red lipsticks and questionable skin treatments. In a future story, I plan to share the travails of lightening my hair for the first time during the pandemic.

Beauty, in all its forms, enriches our lives. Social commentaries on what and whom we consider beautiful, and how we strive for beauty, are also political observations. Who and what we choose to diminish reveals who and what we consider worthy of public discourse.

Interestingly, the Missouri GOP tweeted its swipe at beauty editors around the same time a man wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal advising incoming first lady Jill Biden to drop the title “Dr.” He wrote that it felt “fraudulent and a touch comic” since she only had a doctorate in education. (The writer has never earned a doctorate in any field of study.)

It would, in fact, be fraudulent and a touch comic to describe me as a beauty editor. A Google search, or even a glance at my Twitter bio, would reveal that it’s not my job. I tend to write more often about the ways in which the political is personal: how education, health care, racial injustice, gun violence and immigration affect ordinary people’s everyday lives.

If someone wants to talk about these issues, I’m interested in what they have to say -- whether the person is a stay-at-home mom, bartender, farmer or beauty editor.

In fact, I’d love to hear beauty editors’ thoughts on the Missouri GOP’s attempt to “do politics” by using their profession as a smear.

If you ask me, it ain’t pretty.