So it’s official: it has now been two years since America closed for business, thanks to something we’d never heard of before, a Coronavirus pandemic.
I’ve given up waiting for us to “open.”
Instead, it’s as if we all plunged together off a cliff into a very deep pool and struggled there for far too long, but there is no “other side” to climb out on. Instead, the pool just got gradually shallower and shallower, until today we are still wading through it, still sloshing along but asking ourselves, “Is it over yet? Is it still a pandemic? Do I wear a mask? Or what?”
It seems to me that one of the weirdest side effects for all of us to live with now is the turning inside out, or upside down, or otherwise reversing the polarity of standards and values I always held to be true.
For instance, until the pandemic came along, good parenting always involved limiting the amount of time your child spent watching TV, or being on their phone or computer. Some parents even installed apps that would turn devices off after a specified amount of screen time. “Get off that computer and go outside and play!” we were encouraged to yell at our kids.
But with COVID, the careful parent instead yelled “Don’t you even think of going outside. You stay right here, indoors, where I know you’re safe!” And so we encouraged everyone to stay inside, watching screens from one end of the day to the other.
Another thing that got turned inside out, at least for me, was the supposed virtue of planning ahead. I was never much good at that, but I had learned over the years to deploy it as one tool of many for fighting anxiety. But with the pandemic, that all backfired. It only generated more stress when whatever you planned fell through. It was actually counterproductive to look any farther ahead than dinner.
Even trying to fill in a Gratitude Journal backfired on me. Whenever I tried to write down three things I was grateful for at the end of a day, all it did was remind me of three more things that could be taken away from me by the morning. “At least I’ve got my health,” I would say — only to hear the skeptic in my head add “for now.”
But the nastiest trick this pandemic has played on us was turning all our relationships inside out. It used to be that the more you cared about somebody, the closer you stayed in touch. No longer.
This was driven home for me when one of my sons, at the start of a weeklong visit, found out that although symptomless, he had tested positive for Coronavirus. Fortunately, my husband and I both tested negative, but the logistics then totally floored me. I started tearing my hair out, trying to figure out who would stay in which bedroom, on which floor, and who got the working shower—and who got control of the kitchen.
My son solved the whole conundrum by announcing he had booked himself into an Airbnb. If he got worse, I could leave chicken soup at his door (or, of course, call the doctor), but I couldn’t even kiss him goodbye. I waved from 6 feet away and, because he loved his father and me, he left us.
It was so much the reverse of what I wanted.
It suddenly reminded me of the games of tag I used to play as a youngster with some neighborhood kids. There were two boys, one of whom I liked and one of whom I didn’t. I was a fast runner, so when I was “It,” I could choose which boy to go after. But at that age, the worst punishment that I could administer was a kiss because “Aaugh! Cooties!” Which meant that I spared the boy I liked and chased the other one and kissed him instead. How backwards can you get?!
Which is exactly what, in a more serious way, this pandemic has done to us all. The more we love someone and care about their health, the farther away we must stay. No hugs, no kisses, no regular visits—until the people you care the most about, you end up not seeing at all.
My son is young and healthy, so I’m confident he’ll be done with his virus in no time. But not being able even to hug him? That’s practically killing me.
