I’ve been a professor for 40 years, but teaching Greek to an eight-year-old may be my crowning achievement

It crept up on me, the impact of the pandemic. First came the re­ports of outbreaks elsewhere, then the extension of spring break in my own university, then the movement of classes online. Then the shutdown of churches and businesses and physicians’ offices. About that time, in the middle of March, I shut down too. An aggravating meme circulated the notion that biblical scholars worked on, churning out books and articles, unaffected by the pandemic, but that was not true of me nor of most of my friends. I shut down.

I cast about for something to do, some way in which to be of help, but the options are limited—especially for vulnerable seniors with limited skill sets. The most obvious path was to help with the care of my grandson, Charlie, since his parents were thrown into the deep end of managing their own work-from-home situations while also supervising his every hour. But even that happy path was blocked by the wise recognition that we all needed to let significant time elapse before we could safely be together.

What to do? Almost as a joke, I asked whether Charlie might enjoy learning a little Greek. To my astonishment, he jumped at the chance, and that is how I came to have a standing appointment to teach Greek from 2:45 to 3:30, over FaceTime, five days a week, to an eight-year-old.