To my children: By the time you read this, as adults, the idea of living through a pandemic will not be shocking to you. You will have spent more than a year – more than 5% of your life by now – living inside, wearing masks, knowing that getting infected could have life-altering consequences for everyone you care about.
But living through a pandemic is still shocking to me. A year or two is far less than 5% out of my entire life but I think the pandemic has been more of a shock to my system than it has to yours.
I am living inside, mostly. I drive once a week, maybe, to go to the market or the drugstore, or recently, to my parents-in-law’s house to walk their puppy. I have a good job at the Fed now, though I have not been in the building since March 12th, 2020. I wear a mask when I go inside any place or if I am around someone other than D, A or E. All four of us will be vaccinated by April 19th (E got his early, in February!) but I will continue to wear a mask because it is the only thing we know for sure helps prevent the spread of the virus. Strangely enough, we don’t even how effective the vaccine will be against all the variations of the virus. But we know a mask makes a difference, so I will keep wearing one.
I do not feel paralyzed with fear every day, all day, anymore. It is too hard to get through the day feeling paralyzed, and I have a lot of reasons to get through the day – you, among the most important.
I’m still afraid, though. I am afraid of losing someone to the virus, whatever form that loss might take; after a year of documenting all the terrible things this virus can do to the human body, I know that living with the illness might be worse than dying from it. I am afraid of taking stock of all the people we have lost, so many people who were loved by someone. I am afraid to contemplate all the things we have lost, mourning the concerts and baseball games and swim meets we never got to feel thrilled by. I am afraid to count up all the things we may forget were part of our lives, wondering if we will we ever be able to stand together in a museum, or a graduation, or a political rally, like seeing Obama speak at Liberty Memorial. And I hate being barraged with the things this virus has uncovered about some people’s essential nature, hearing about someone who refuses to be vaccinated, or listening to someone like Trump incite violence and seeing his influence at work.
But, following your example, I am also less afraid than I was. You have been careful but not terrified, vigilant but not sanctimonious, and aware without being paranoid. In a strange way, even through so much loss and sadness, you have sort of integrated these new ways of living into your way of life. So now, I have gone back to worrying more about you driving across the country with friends than about you not wearing a mask or washing your hands. Just the normal worries, worries I took for granted until last year, until the pandemic.
P.S. I just read a New York Times article about feeling like it is not okay to mourn the loss of things like concerts or vacations, when over half a million people died. It explains that better than I did here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/well/mind/grief-pandemic-losses.html