“I’m afraid.” The teacher, like her student, talks from her screen. Leah, a 10-year-old, had prepared four questions. Four questions she chose to ask her teacher, so as not to worry her parents. A kid with her bushy pigtails, her sad eyes and a plaintive voice. She had the good fortune to have access to a working internet and computer, and the competence to use a platform like Zoom to talk to others over distance. She is one of the privileged children who get to visit with their peers and their teachers, and thus to still have some semblance of school. And so Leah called on her teacher with her solemn four questions, written on white lined paper, in her neatest printing, hoping for answers. Four questions, each one circled:
Will the coronavirus ever go away?
Will I ever get my normal life back?
Will I ever go on a real vacation again?
You may think I’m a cry baby and I kinda am. But that’s okay, isn’t it?
Questions we all ask ourselves, each other or our own distant connection: Will this virus ever go away…? Will we ever get our normal back? Will we ever go on a real vacation again? And You may think I’m a cry baby. That’s okay because I am. No doubt, Leah’s trusted and beloved teacher offered reassurance.
So first of all, I’m thinking, Maybe I’m a cry baby too not be the rock they said my own mother was. But maybe this is less about rocks and more a time for cry babies. Not all the time, not in a way that is inconsolable, but just enough to accommodate the fact of grief. A 10-year-old was copping to it — her fear, her worry, her sadness. Not sure some of us dare — to weep now and then, behind our doors, into our pillows, even without shedding tears. Tears that are not for ourselves but for others. For the children who desperately need to play together, to hug their friends, to tussle and hold hands and go to the where the action is. For our teens who yearn to congregate and rely on their tomorrow plans, to know their futures still await them. For our adult children, the bread winners, the ones who are responsible for seeing that people have an income, health insurance and can put food on the table.
And so too we are trying /hoping to put a brave face on a new normal, with the walks we take, the chats we invite on our screens, the home projects we undertake, the evidence we attend. We are finding a solidarity with those who help with our groceries, wave from their social distance paths and speak to us across our screens. We are forging connections with strangers who send through the cyber space funny riddles, inspiring poetry and musical tributes. We pass on the courageous deeds of the many on front lines and those who sustain communities: A young man, in New York City, almost faceless in mask and wool hat, delivers 500 bags of groceries to 500 people in need. A musician who sits on a park bench everyday to play her harp in the late afternoon dusk. The curb side deliveries of fresh baked bread from a local bakery. And local neighbors who open their doors at a fixed time to wave to each other and then go back inside, a moment, just a moment, of treasured connectivity. Reminders that even in a time of imposed and necessary isolation we are connected, we care, we are not reduced to a polarized politic.
And too, a friend reminds us to let joy in. To make space for joy even as we struggle with fear or anger and uncertainty. She reminds us to take in the greening fields and crystal-clear rivers, to inhale big outdoor breaths. To employ nature’s restorative spring step: the return of a Carolina wren, the sudden flight of a ruffled heron or the calling of wood frogs heard on a woodland walk. Or maybe enjoy the waves and “hi’s” of fellow walkers, six feet away. And finally to welcome the tears of another cry baby. Because really it’s okay to be a cry baby now and then.
Ruth Charney is a resident of Greenfield.