Before COVID, there was a freedom that is no more
/The Boston Globe
Beverly Beckham
Nearly two years. That’s how long it’s been since the big bad wolf came huffing and puffing, causing us to batten down our hatches, forcing us to stay inside. Nearly two years ago life as we knew it suddenly stopped. Before was a different world. There were smiles you could see. Handshakes between strangers. Kisses among friends. Galas. Parties. Celebrations. Crowds without end.
Before was a freedom that is no more.
Thursday, March 19, 2020. This is my demarcation day. The night before I was in Boston. With friends. Singing. The next morning, Canton High School’s spring musical, “Mama Mia,” which was scheduled to open that night, was canceled. Three of my grandchildren had parts. They had been rehearsing every weekday after school for months. My grandkids rolled with the cancellation. At least they seemed to. Their parents rolled with it, too. So I pretended to roll with it, though, in fact, my heart ached not just for them but for every kid whose brief time on a stage was taken from them.
Nearly two years later, my heart is still aching and I am still pretending. I say out loud, when people ask, that all is well, that this new world is fine, that we as a country have been creative and resourceful and aren’t we lucky to have had vaccines and a booster and that what doesn’t break us really does make us stronger.
The kids in the drama club at Canton High School are performing “Grease” in a few weeks. Isn’t this good news? And in the fall they did “Clue.” And it was excellent. The kids were excellent. And, yes, they were all wearing masks. And, yes, the audience was wearing masks. And the kids in this soon-to-be new production of “Grease,” unless the rules change, will still be wearing masks. And the audience will still be wearing masks. But if that’s what it takes to keep everyone safe?
And that’s what it does take. Distance and separation. But nearly two years of distance and separation imposed on us for our own good — not just masks but no hugging, no singing, no sitting close, no visiting the sick, no mourning the dead — all these restrictions that have protected us physically, are taking their toll.
I remember the first summer of COVID-19 driving to Connecticut with my husband to meet our son and his family outside of some small hotel. We all wore masks. We sat at picnic benches. We waited in line, 6 feet apart from each other and from strangers, and ordered chicken fingers and french fries. And disinfected our hands before we pulled down our masks and ate.
Disinfected became disaffected as I typed. And isn’t this the truth? Aren’t we all a little alienated these days? Distant from one another, not just because we have to be, but because we have come to be? And more hostile than before, on edge, angry, especially behind the wheel? The New York Times reported this week that from the summer of 2019 to the summer of 2021, aggressive drivers caused a 17.5 percent increase in vehicle deaths, “the largest two-year increase since just after World War II.”
I imagine people were angry and disaffected then, too.
I was so happy that day, sitting at a picnic table looking at the faces of the people I love. But I was happy, too, looking at the faces of people I didn’t know sitting at other tables eating and drinking, laughing and talking. It was the first time I realized how much I missed other human beings.
Nearly two years into this pandemic and I’m realizing that you don’t have to get COVID-19 to feel its effects. I got COVID-19. I felt its physical effects. They’re gone now.
But I feel its psychological effects every time I walk by someone in my neighborhood whose eyes are distant, who looks straight ahead, who doesn’t make eye contact, whose chin is down. I know there were always these someones. But now these someones are most everyone.
I feel COVID-19′s effects in stores, in the silence between people, in the lack of chatter in lines.
And I feel it on the road, in the angry drivers, in the crashes I see almost every day.
Nearly two years ago when the virus was new and we were wiping down our groceries with sanitizer and we didn’t know anything about COVID-19, except that it was killing people, and there was no vaccine in sight, I was worried about life and death.
I’m still worried about life and death. But not just the life and death of a body. I’m worried, too, about the life and death of what makes us who we are.
