70. When it’s over

There’s light—maybe—at the end of a long national tunnel of darkness. The election happened and, despite the ill-informed and sometimes outrageous efforts of many, appears to be taking hold. The numbers of people contracting, being hospitalized, and dying from Covid-19 shoot up dramatically by the day, but vaccines are in pipelines, and the relief they might provide to an overstressed health care system should be immediate. The rest of us can see to June—and by some miracle of mind will wear masks, distance, and carefully wash our hands until then. (Have others noticed as I have that sniffles and coughs, nose leaks and gut aches have declined with those holy three?)

 

When we rest easier in that faraway time, when we have our vaccinations and the weather is good enough to live outside again, when we’ve not given up our masks completely, but feel comfortable in smaller crowds and more open spaces—although we still might bump elbows rather than shake hands—then it will be time to put ourselves and our worlds together in some new way.

 

It won’t be the old way, because so many are gone and many more touched by the Covid. I hope it won’t be that we all know someone personally who has died, but think it might need to be that we each and all have brushed close enough to the disease to make it—almost—universally real. The analogy might be gay marriage, which until a short time ago was a damnable sin and abomination in the eyes of a majority of Americans, but slipped quietly but firmly through the hoops of the judiciary and many churches when voices were raised and we all recognized those voices as belonging to people we knew and maybe even loved. 

 

I say “almost” because in a big, bustling, and diverse country like ours there is rarely unanimity. Even WW II had its Nazi sympathizers and its conscientious objectors. But the consensus will have to be large enough that doubters will acquiesce. And we—those of us, who like the loudest gay chorister, have raised our voices on the side of masks, distancing, and vaccine, are comfortable in that new world, it will be up to us to NOT say “I told you so.” Knitting communities—and even families—together again will be delicate but necessary work.

 

# # #