At the end of the last school year, I teared up as I drove my son through a line of his face-mask-clad teachers. They handed him end-of-the-year gifts and beamed him huge smiles — the first they’d given in person for two months.
Some even held signs that said, “We miss you … but we’ll see you next year!”
Our state didn’t disclose any immediate plans for the fall because the fall felt so far away. And I felt hopeful. Hopeful that maybe, by August, the outbreak would have eased. There would be a treatment. We might just be able to safely return to a sliver of normalcy.
But it’s almost mid-July, and the United States is currently swamped with new cases and rising deaths — including my home state of Alaska, which keeps setting new daily case records.
Even though it’s the middle of summer, the depression that knocked me to my knees in wintry March is wrapping me in a suffocating embrace once again.
My partner is a teacher for a private school. If he returns to work, will he fall ill? If he doesn’t return to work because of a surge of community spread, will he still have a job? Parents aren’t going to pay for private school if it’s conducted remotely.
And my son. He’s almost four. He is thriving in his two-day-a-week special education summer school program. His two teachers wear masks and they are strict about handwashing and taking temperatures. The class is tiny. It’s safe — or at least it feels that way.
But what about school? It’s so much bigger. So many more kids to keep safe, and more teachers to keep healthy.
Like many districts across the country, our district’s plan feels rickety. If this unprecedented time has taught me anything, it’s that plans can change within seconds. Even though my son is set to return to school, I could opt for remote learning if I feel the risk is too high.
Or schools could close altogether, like they did in March.
But then there’s the risk of his emotional and mental health. And mine. How am I supposed to work if he’s not at school?
How the hell would he and I get through a whole long, dark winter without the social groups that usually support us? School, library storytime, play dates, book clubs?
And what if things take a turn for the worse? What if teachers begin to contract COVID and pass away, as so many fear will happen?
What if we get it? What if our family members, many of them teachers in other states, do?
There’s no good answer and no good medical treatment for this crappy disease, and it makes me feel like I can’t catch my breath.
We all know how terrifying it is to feel extreme amounts of anxiety these days. Now, though, I’m also getting increasingly frustrated with our leaders at the state and national level. New Zealand is practically back to normal with no community transmission. Germany, France, and Taiwan have put in measures that protect everyone.
Why can’t the United States? Where is our plan, our blueprint for getting through this? Why do so many fight mask mandates and social distancing when research shows that it freaking helps?
It’s been four long months since March, and the summer will end before we know it. The sick dread is a weight in my belly that I can’t shake.
I know I’m not alone. I reach back into history and see that so many people have gone through times like these that were harder: wars, famines, depressions, pandemics.
The one thing those times have in common is that, eventually, they ended.
That is the only thing that keeps me from pure despair. This has to end someday. It has to. And while in the early days I believed that day could be soon, now I know it will be months. Maybe even years.
So let’s take care of one another. Let’s give grace to employees, especially parents and caregivers. Let’s take care of our teachers and nurses and doctors and grocery store workers and waiters and waitresses and children and elderly folk and everyone in between.
Let’s let care and love guide us through the rest of this. Let’s hold space for one another’s fears and grief and worries.
Because at the end of the day, we are all in this together. You could literally turn to anyone, anywhere, and from a masked distance of six feet, you could each talk about the one thing every person in the world has in common right now.
So let’s hold the space, and let’s hold the light, and let’s help one another believe that we will get through this.
