As I know is true for so many of us right now, my feelings about coronavirus life come in waves.
Sometimes they are minimalist and gentle, little ripples of acceptance of the situation and gratitude for how well my family can forge ahead during it. These are the days during which I find it easy to float with the current, when I have reserve and patience and energy to seek out ways to help others and enrich the boys’ lives and experiences above and beyond the normal.
At other times, they sweep to shore with a rougher chop, churning up sand and spray, darkening in color, suggesting an undercurrent of power that might knock you sideways or wet the shorts you thought you could keep dry by only wading in to your ankles. The losses scratch at your legs, the reminiscences of Before tug at your limbs and hair.
On other occasions, the waves crash angrily against land, furious spittle arching up and over the forceful blow to the coast. Their tumult and torrent feel utterly wild, beyond all control; that, in and of itself, is nerve-racking, unmooring, never familiar even if it’s known.
To be in the midst of a pandemic without any functional leadership guiding us through with a steady hand and message of sobriety, fact, unity is to be in the more tremulous swells at all times.
I am reminded of the ways we would wait, in southern Louisiana, as hurricanes approached. Eyes, hands, hearts, hammers and boards glued to weather reports as the whirling eye stayed and jumped and resumed and altered course on its march through the Gulf. When was just the right time to board up? When would be too late? When should you leave? How could you ever really know until it was too late?
To wait in that netherworld of uncertainty is like standing eye to navel with the mightiest wave as it crests and begins falling in on itself, on you. It is difficult. Scary. Unsettling. Humans, generally speaking, don’t like unknowns, not least when their lives, families, livelihoods, and mental well-being are on the line.
A wave crashes and retreats, a hurricane meets land and loses power before dying out completely. Destruction remains in their wakes, but the attacks are over. Survivors can exhale, take stock. Sometimes, additional horrors await on the other side, but the event that wrought the mayhem is done.
This, now, Covid-19, is different, as pandemics are. The event persists, evades, mutates, and attacks quietly, quickly, forcibly. It takes great advantage of the unwitting, the nonbelievers, the thoroughly and often willfully misinformed, but it preys on us all with hungry whimsy. And in this divide of who believes and who doesn’t, community breaks as do poorly-built levees and earnest sand castles held together by the frame of a bucket long since gone.
Without good leadership and a collective sense of purpose and concern, things fall apart. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. The gyre turns and rages.
Amidst all this, I try to remain a steady foundation. Jack turns 14, and we celebrate with family and friends, in socially-distant and virtual fashion. Masks are as natural as blowing out lit candles with scrunched eyes and a wish after a song of good tidings ends. It’s funny how quickly you can adapt.
