A season of reunions, each full of tears, relief, and joy
/The Boston Globe
Beverly Beckham
It had been 311 days since I’d seen my youngest grandchildren. We’d said goodbye the Monday before last Christmas in a parking lot in Connecticut. My son had rented a car for the occasion, and driven from Manhattan. His wife was back at their apartment packing. Two weeks later, they, their three children and Daisy, their dog, moved to Scotland.
That day in the parking lot of a strip mall, we spied a small restaurant, which was still serving food outside. It was a mild day for winter, but still chilly. We sat at separate, metal tables, with our jackets zipped and scarves around our necks. The kids ordered hot chocolate and chicken fingers. The adults drank coffee. All of us chatted about Christmas and the new year and what it would bring.
And we pretended to be happy.
After we’d eaten we said our goodbyes. With our masks on, we hugged, short, disciplined hugs, and we didn’t look too long into each other’s eyes. It will be fun, my husband and I said to the kids. It will be an adventure! And we’ll see you as soon as we can. We promise.
As soon as we can came later than expected. But it came, and a month ago, fully vaccinated and boostered, adhering to the ever-changing requirements of governments, my husband and I jetted our way to Scotland.
It was Luke we saw first, the 12-year-old who walked in from school, so much taller than he’d been that afternoon in Connecticut. And handsome, too, dressed in a school uniform that would get the Queen’s approval: collared white shirt, striped blue tie, royal blue blazer. Definitely not the way he dressed for school in New York. And that face. Seeing all of it at once, eyes and lips smiling at us. Smiling at me.
A hug never felt so good.
Next came Euan, the 8-year old, racing in from school, he, too, taller than he was last year; he, too, wearing a collared shirt and tie, stories spilling out of him about school and books and Harry Potter and his garden. “Mimi? G-Diddy? Want to see my garden?” he asked us with a bit of a Scottish lilt projected through two new front teeth.
Finally, there was Megan, the 14-year-old, the last home, her school the farthest away. And there again, the blazer, the white collared shirt, the tie, Megan with her long, flowing hair looking like Hermione Granger in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” smiling, hugging my husband, hugging me. She showed me her room. Her shelves full of books. Her treasures. Unmasked, we sat side by side on her bedroom floor. Not an ocean separating us, not 6 feet apart, and we talked.
During the worst of the pandemic, I read books about World War II. They were my reminder of the many hardships people have had to endure on this planet. For me, these hardships put COVID-19 in its place.
After my son and his family moved to Scotland, Megan, who also reads stories about WWII, recommended “The Last Year of the War” by Susan Meissner, which is about a German-American girl who becomes best friends with a Japanese-American girl in an internment camp. I read it and copied this except into my journal:
“I know that to bear the continual loss of ordinary joys you had to erect a kind of barricade within yourself, like a cave in which to hide. You could then walk around on the streets of what once had been a pretty city, but was now battered, in an insulated semi-daze. This was how you dealt with it, and the more grievous the loss, the thicker the insulation around you had to be.”
The continual loss of ordinary joys. That’s what this pandemic has been.
My husband and I flew home from Scotland via Dublin a day after the United States lifted restrictions on travel from most of Europe, restrictions that were enacted a year-and-a-half ago.
Our flight was packed with grandparents who hadn’t seen their grandchildren in at least that amount of time. Adult parents who hadn’t seen their adult children. Adult children who hadn’t seen their parents. Sisters and brothers, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, entire families kept apart because of COVID-19.
At Logan, the reunions were many, each full of tears and relief and joy.
Why did my son and his family move to Scotland? Because my son’s wife, Tania, is Scottish and her mother lives in Scotland and her mother isn’t getting any younger, and after 20 years in New York City, and a pandemic that separated them more than distance ever did, I think that Tania, like most of us these days, yearned for the ordinary joys of home.
Beverly Beckham’s column appears every two weeks. She can be reached at bev@beverlybeckham.com.