The penguins at the New England Aquarium seemed relaxed. Some stood on the rocks, crowing into the humid air above them. Others answered these squawks. They seemed to engage playfully and intimately with one another. The same could not be said of my family and the other guests at the aquarium. Everyone seemed aware of everyone else’s personal space. A mother apologized for her toddler son who stared at me (and my French fries) with rapt interest in the cafe. “He doesn’t get out much,” she said with a laugh.
After a tour of marine life, my sister and I emerged into the icy light that passes for sunshine in a Boston March. We each held the hand of a preschooler: my son, 4, and my niece, 3. We were both a little rattled. It had been a long time since any of us had been in such a crowded, child-centric space for fun. A building full of strangers had been overwhelming for all of us, and it felt reassuring and safe to be apart, just the four of us again.
Outside, I wondered how long I would gaze with mistrust at other people, wondering if they were a source of germs (the coronavirus, or the run-of-the-mill colds that still keep my children out of school until PCR results return). I wondered when this would all be over, and I worried that the answer was never. I wondered how long it would be before I felt less angry.
My sister and I speculated about where we could buy a cup of tea. As we wondered, a middle-aged woman who sat nearby with her adult son overheard and shared that she wanted some, too; where could she find some? Then: Where were we from? She and I had both recently moved from the Greater Philadelphia area to Rhode Island. Do you like it? she wanted to know.
I mentioned, because it is hard for me to stop myself from doing so, that my mother had died the week before my move. And so she told us about her mother’s death four years ago and her father’s death in December of 2021.
She leaned her head back, absorbing the light, and told us how she had spoken to her mother every single day before she lost her, and that putting her father, who suffered from dementia, in assisted living during the pandemic had been wrenching. And now he was gone. My sister and I nodded. We all wanted tea, and the sun. We all wanted our mothers.
My sister and I long for normalcy, but we see our elderly and immune-compromised father regularly. My sister’s wife has a chronic illness, and our preschoolers are unvaccinated. We are more Covid cautious than some, and less cautious than others. How easy it is to feel that people who are not just like us are paranoid on the one hand or reckless on the other.
Such characterizations might briefly soothe the hurts that we have all accumulated: the casual eugenics present in the dismissals of deaths of people with pre-existing conditions; the reckless sexism present in the indifference to the availability of in-person school; the cruel uncompensated loss of paychecks, customers and clients; the intimate-partner violence and substance abuse that has swelled behind closed doors; the crushing loneliness that comes from working behind a mask or seeing few people outside of your home. People have split themselves into warring factions over measures like mask mandates and school closures, with each side minimizing the harms about which the other is concerned. Many of us feel abandoned.
In that moment, with that stranger — she never told us her name — it was easy to remember that the past two years have been brutal for so many, for so many reasons.
Both in my work as a social worker and in my own network of friends and relatives, I have observed the wreckage of the past 25 months. Women have asked me, with terrifying urgency, how they can continue to live their lives entirely in their homes when a violent family member renders the home unsafe. I have watched people turn toward substances to ease the pressures of the pandemic, and then enter rehab reluctantly or hopefully; I have listened to their family members and friends recount relapses, the shame and fear making their words all but inaudible.
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Those who have worked on the front lines have told me of the abuse they have endured from patients who did not believe in Covid or precautions; they have also shared their frustration at the unending caution of those who had the luxury to remain cloistered for two years. “I’m just so lonely,” a friend confided.
So many of us are broken, bruised, distrustful and longing for warmth. The satisfying bubble of righteous indignation — or even a simmer of anger — about what others have done or failed to do is easier to tap than the sharp pain of grief or the dull ache of prolonged sorrow and worry.
Everyone has suffered — some more, of course. Some less. But we are coming together again, like it or not. Companies are requiring employees to return to the office. Even the most Covid-cautious school districts are beginning to make masks optional for teachers and children. Amid all this, the Omicron BA.2 subvariant is creeping into headlines, and into nasal passages and throats. There may once again be discussions over the “best” way to respond. To prevent the surge, or to wait and see. To mask, to unmask. To eat out, to get takeout. To travel for fun, to cancel the flight. People will make different choices. This is hard.
I am quick to jump to anger or outrage over precautions that seem harmful to me, such as masking children (or adults!) indefinitely or letting precautions go — such as testing or quarantine measures — in ways that seem obviously harmful. But sputtering at my husband as I scroll through Facebook is allowing myself to be hoodwinked.
The blame does not rest on individuals for the divided, germy mess we now find ourselves in. The blame rests on our government, and the systems that failed to keep us safe from Covid and its collateral damage: to offer compensation for missed work, accessible health care, tests, safe in-person schools, coherent guidance, truth about airborne particles and masks. The blame rests on those with large platforms who have exploited some Americans’ legitimate mistrust of medicine for their own personal gain.
What can I do, instead of tossing my anger at others, hoping it will stick? I can write emails to the people in charge, and then close my laptop and go to the library. I can bring my mask, for now. I will talk to the librarian and the other parents in the children’s room. Our children will eschew the books we have selected. And they will play, together.
Other people are all that we have left. I don’t want righteous alienation for my young son and my niece. I want community. I want a better world, sure, but failing that, I want this world, and that includes all the people in it. I recognized in this mourning woman a sort of glazed sorrow desperate for joy and connection. She wanted to tell us her story. She wanted to have a cup of tea with her son in a warm room. “Once my father was gone,” she said, “I had to grieve my mother. I hadn’t had time before. I had to keep my dad alive. Now I have time. You know?” She looked at us to see if we understood. We nodded. We did.
I am tired of judging the Covid choices of strangers — people whose experiences I do not know. I am sparing — perhaps arbitrarily — when it comes to my own indoor dining. But I don’t think I care if this woman drinks tea every day in a cafe filled to bursting. I will wear my mask to protect others, but I don’t know if she wore a mask inside the buildings that she visited before or after she spoke with us. And I have decided to be done nursing worry or ire if she did not.
I thought about her — she is an orphan now, even if she is 50 — as I drove home from the aquarium. We never found any tea, but in our playroom my son made me my 500th cup of invisible tea served in a yellow toy cup, and I pretended to sip it.
The virus isn’t going anywhere. The ways that it affects us will ebb and flow. We will have to live with that, and with one another. But I, for one, want to stand on the tallest rock and squawk into the air: a cry of mourning for everything that we have lost. And I want the woman I met near Boston Harbor to hear my cry, and I want her to join me.
Miranda Featherstone is a writer and social worker. She has written about how to raise children without fear, even during the pandemic, and about how to talk to children about grief.
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