Covid Living: Fall 2020
by Paula Fung
Little House on the Prairie was my favorite TV show when I was a kid.
I absorbed the lessons, intentional or not, of community, faith, marriage, sibling rivalry, and what you might have to do if you had a raging infection in the leg, and also, a very sharp knife.
I’m a Mary. Mary and her shiny blond hair and blue eyes, so unlike mine, was my favorite sister on Little House. Not vivacious Laura and her swinging braids, who was always getting into scrapes, resolving them by her own adorableness. With widened eyes and sincere sounding apologies, she explained away her pranks, received absolution, turned away solemnly, then hop-skipped away when she thought she was out of sight. Laura and her unpredictability made me nervous.
Like studious Mary, I like to read and write, and cook, and sew. When the shut-down happened, I wasn’t too worried. I was thrilled to drive down to Washington DC to pick up my 24 year-old daughter at the house she shared with roommates. We walked down to grab lunch for the car at the locally famous “Mother’s Bagels” and noted the long line snaking around the block. We decided against it. There were too many people.
Instead, we pulled leftover chicken tiki from the fridge, grabbed her one duffel bag, and began the drive home. Now, six months later, I think back on the innocence of that day; she thinking she’ll get some home loving for a couple of weeks, and me just happy to have a fully- grown kid back under my roof. The threat of coronavirus was still far away.
Shortly thereafter, my second daughter moved home to Rye from her tiny but perfect apartment in NYC. It had a wall of exposed brick, a small galley of new kitchen appliances, and it seemed we had just made the trip to the Ikea in Brooklyn to furnish it. Her roommate, a college friend from Florida, had already left. This was when NY was a high-risk state, and Florida was still sunshine and parties. (Isn’t it still??)
She set up a big screen monitor in her childhood bedroom and proceeded to continue her finance job remotely. The dim blue light flickered far into the night and I wondered how she had managed this demanding job all on her own for the past year.
When our kids are going through the school system, these are the things we hope and dream for them; the jobs, the apartments, the independence. It’s the reward, theirs and ours, for the homework, the tutors, the study groups, and the grind of graduation requirements. But maybe we weren’t meant to see all the hard parts. Maybe we weren’t meant to see how much coffee they drink, how often they check their phone, no longer for Snapchats from friends, but from higher-ups at work, looking for status reports.
Routine has helped, as I watched my youngest miss the markers of a senior year in Rye. High School sports was one of the first things to be cancelled. My daughter was a member of the lacrosse team, favored to win the section, with hopes for a chance to compete at the State Championship. I wanted my husband and I to stand on the field with her on the traditional Senior Night when player’s parents were honored. I wanted to see the fence surrounding the Rye High turf decorated by the underclassmen: SENIORS 2020!!
We missed the pre-prom rituals. I even mourned not taking her for a spray tan, which I swore I would never do, but suddenly I wanted nothing else for her. Same with the fancy hair and make-up. Well, the make-up we could manage at home, as we did for her sisters, but big bouncy curls falling over her shoulders, wearing the dress she finally picked after weeks of back and forth to Lord & Taylor, the awkward pinning of the boutonnière on her date’s lapel.
I wanted all of that for her.
There have been highlights; the homecooked meals, the puzzles completed by my husband and daughters, the squeezing of limes for margaritas, the joy of adult conversations with one’s children. Underlying all this, I can’t stop thinking is this how it begins? Terrible moments in history, I mean. For a long time, people with seemingly secure jobs thought the Great Depression wouldn’t hit them. Secular Jews didn’t think the Nazis would come to their doors. The threat was far away, it was somewhere else, it was someone else.
But now it’s us. Close to the water, close to the city, in our near perfect hamlet, complete with neighbors helping neighbors…COVID19 still hit us. We braved it, some of us suffered with it, most of us knew someone who didn’t survive it.
Things are opening up now. The Mary in me wonders why. Laura is getting bored, Laura wants to play, Laura’s pennies are burning a hole in the pocket of her calico dress. I’m content to be home with a book to read, holes in socks to mend, which I actually did for the first time, one evening in early April.
The summer was a good respite. Collectively, we’re proud our state made it through the tough days, the horribly overcrowded emergency rooms, the begging for ventilators, our governor leading by example and short tweets giving us “the numbers” and warning us not to get too confident. Now, the days are getting shorter, there is the tiniest chill in the air.
I wonder, though, can we do this? Can we ask this, again, of our kids, of ourselves? No one really knows about vaccines, or about antibodies, although cable news drones on all day about these things, posing unanswerable questions over and over.
Can Laura go back to Zoom? Can even this Mary do it?
The food has been cooked, the closets are organized, and we’re bored with puzzles.
