Thoughts from a Pandemic

When I was a child, and we were studying the Great Depression in homeschool, I realized that I knew someone who had lived through it: my Great Aunt Goldie. The next time we visited her, I asked her what it was like to live through that time, as the images of bread lines and scrappy children from my schoolbook flashed through my head. I leaned forward, eager to hear all her amazing stories.

"Well," she said offhandedly, "some folks had it hard, but it wasn't really different for us." Then she changed the subject to talk about her doll collection, which was clearly more important to her.

What will I say when my future grand-niece asks about the Great Pandemic of 2020?

When something so huge and nebulous and anxiety-inducing is all around you, but life goes on as normal: how do I explain something like that? 

What stories do I have to tell?

I have a story about how Zach had to wear a mask at work and I couldn't visit my friends or how we couldn't find whole-wheat flour at the grocery store, and how we were so much better off than a lot of people because our jobs weren't affected. But none of those make very good stories. 

It's also not very fun to talk about the emotional heaviness and numbness that sometimes felt crushing, the distant news reports and the keen sense of global suffering, the feeling that I was living in an alternate reality to the people around me, the gnawing sense of privilege and no clear idea of what to do with it, the primal fear that sometimes rose, the way that my brain decided that we must be on a trip and that's why we hadn't seen our friends in a while (and the locals at this exotic destination seemed fixated on wearing masks and staying six feet apart— kinda strange, but when in Rome…). 

Maybe I'll tell my grand-niece about the things I did to cope. How I gave away garden starter packs to people in the community, how I planted food for myself and to share, how I tried to learn to backstitch, and played around with watercolors, and baked sourdough along with the rest of the world.

Maybe I'll her how I learned that it was okay to slow down, that it was okay to give myself some grace when so many things were up in the air. That I learned that my worth was not based on how much I could help others. That realizing my worth laid elsewhere helped me keep fighting.

Maybe I'll try to capture images from the pandemic: gray days, me stretched out on the bed trying to mend a skirt while listening to Joan Baez on YouTube. Lots of Instagram. Cycles of frustration and fear and mourning and denial and happy-go-luckiness and frustration again. The way we laughed in cynicism as people suddenly started lauding Zach as a hero rather than scoffing at his low-wage work. Music for every occasion: David Bowie for folding laundry; Electric Light Orchestra for washing dishes. Phone calls with my siblings. Chat dates with my best friend. Six-feet-apart walks with my mom. Hours upon hours of hiking with Zach, watching the world turn from brown to green. The YouTube shows we watched, the episodes of Naruto: Shippuden, the slices of lemon pound cake, the ways we tried to cope. 

The nights when the heaviness lifted, and we sat on the front porch and watched a pink sunset spattered across the sky, and drank iced mint tea from a mason jar and felt that everything was going to be okay after all.

Maybe I should be thinking about the changes I want to tell my future grand-nieces about.

I want to tell them that during the pandemic, we learned to appreciate the internet like never before, but also realized how important in-person community was.

I want to tell them that during the pandemic, labor reforms were sparked that valued the low-wage essential workers all around us.

I want to tell them that during the pandemic, neighbors started talking to each and that it was the revival of local community.

I want to tell them that during the pandemic, we started taking the climate crisis seriously and that's the reason they have a livable planet today.

I want to tell them that during the pandemic, the myth of self-sufficiency was shattered and that we all realized that we clearly and desperately need each other.

Or maybe I won't tell them any stories. Maybe my mind will have erased these moments, wiping them away, refusing to retell them, eager to let them fade like a dream that you can remember for a few minutes when you wake up but sinks into forgetfulness by late afternoon. 

Maybe I'll say, "Some folks had it hard, but it wasn't really different for us."

What stories will you tell?

~~~ 

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