Getting Covid
When North was home for winter break in December, they got covid and Noah and I were sick, too. He and I never tested positive, but we only tested once each, so it’s possible that we had it, too. If all three of us did, it would be the third time North’s had it, the third for me, and the second for Noah. Beth has only had it once (as far as we know). The pattern seems to be that some combination of us gets it about once a year since the fall of 2022, which was the first time it breached the perimeter of our family.
Negotiating Covid
One night at dinner during that same break, North said they often get sick at home and made a request that the rest of us resume masking in public, at least while they’re home and for two weeks before each time they come home. So, we masked when we left the house for the rest of their time at home and again before and during our trips to Wheeling and Oberlin in December and January.
North never stopped masking and is part of a group called Covid Safe Oberlin that distributes masks and advocates for masking. This puts them in a small minority even in the liberal enclaves of Oberlin and Takoma Park. But I do still see more people out and about in masks than I did before covid. It’s one of the covid-era changes that never went all the way back to baseline.
Beth, Noah, and I are not masking when North’s at school, so I circled March 7 on the calendar (two weeks before the day North comes home for spring break) so we would remember to start again. The day before that when I reminded Noah, a series of conversations unfolded, first just between me and him (Beth was in Wheeling visiting her mom) and then between the three of us when Beth came home the next day and then between all four of us during our weekly Sunday morning video call.
It turns out we are not all in accord about how to handle masking in the long term, especially when North comes home for the summer and we’re kind of at an impasse. But during the run-up to their spring break, we have continued masking—at the grocery store, the gym, and a museum (Beth); coffeeshops, public transportation, and book club (me); and public transportation, Panera game night, and a concert (Noah). We will have to revisit the issue for summer and see if we can find a workable compromise.
Before these discussions, when Noah and I were sick again in late February and early March, he decided not to go to his game night, and I decided to get takeout rather than dine in when I wanted to patronize a local Mexican/Salvadoran restaurant’s fundraiser for immigrant aid. I also masked before going in to pick up the food. I think pre-covid we wouldn’t have been as careful about not spreading our germs, especially with something that just felt like a mild cold. In varying degrees, we are all more careful about contagion. The problem is the variance.
Not Getting Covid
Of course, not every illness is covid. Last summer North and I each thought we might have it, but we didn’t. North spent a week at the beach with friends in June and came back with pinkeye and an upper respiratory infection. They tested negative for flu and covid, and it turned out to be a sinus infection. Similarly, when I was sick in June and July with a sore throat that lasted for several weeks, I was tested for covid, strep (twice), and flu and all the tests were negative. I never did find out what it was.
In the interest of not getting covid, or at least getting milder cases of it, we do get the covid vaccine every fall, along with the flu vaccine.
Remembering Covid
As the crisis phase of covid recedes further into the past, it can be hard to remember what it was like, or rather, how long certain phases of it lasted. I recently read the graphic novel Spent, by Alison Bechdel, which takes place in Vermont from the fall of 2022 to spring 2024. It’s not about covid, but it’s often in the background. Some characters get it. Some are shown masked in stores. And there’s a scene early in the book in which the characters attend a party, everyone takes a covid test at the door, and no one enters the house until they get their results.
At first, I wondered—were such precautions still widespread so far into the pandemic? And of course, it depended a lot on where you lived and (sadly) your political orientation. But when I thought about it, I realized fall 2022 was North’s junior year of high school and the beginning of their psychiatric crisis. I remember them having to test to be admitted to the psych unit and the partial hospitalization program they attended and being masked when we visited them and when I went to North’s school to update all their teachers about the situation. So, I guess that scene is credible, especially in liberal social circles.
Then after going through this thought process, I came across a post about masking from early March 2023 in my Facebook memories. I asked, “Are you still masking. Where and where not?”
Answers ranged from, yes everywhere outside the house to we never really did except where it was required (this from my cousin who lives in Idaho), with a lot of people in between making decisions based on locale. This is what I had to say:
Thanks, friends. I still mask almost everywhere indoors in public (and on trains and buses). Thinking of loosening up but trying to decide what the new parameters will be. We ate inside a restaurant tonight and it felt odd, even though it was a big space and nearly empty.
So that’s where we were almost exactly halfway between the beginning of the shutdowns and now. It was several more months until I stopped masking on a regular basis. I remember this because I’d just stopped when we started again in August 2023 after North came home from camp with covid, but that didn’t last long.
Gathering, After Covid
It seems kind of crazy that we are still experiencing post-covid firsts, six years after the virus upended our lives. But we are. Here are a couple from the past year:
7/11
We attended Takoma Park’s quirky little parade in the morning. We used to go almost every year, but between cancellations for covid in 2020 and 2021 and various people’s travel the next three years, we hadn’t been all together since 2019, so that was fun.
10/4
She answered, “Steph. I haven’t seen you since that other wedding. The one that didn’t take.” Here is a good time to explain Sara has had three weddings. One in her late twenties, the one to which Abigail was referring. Then in her late forties, during the first summer of covid, she legally married Dave in an outdoor ceremony with a handful of local friends who would not need to travel during those perilous times. This third wedding was the party with a wider circle of family and friends Sara wanted and couldn’t have five years ago.
And this doesn’t affect us directly, but I was interested to learn from our friend and the kids’ old preschool teacher Lesley that the school, which became an all-outdoor school during the pandemic, just this fall back went to a hybrid indoor/outdoor model.
8/13
During covid, the school stayed open by becoming an outdoor school and it has stayed that way ever since. But starting this next school year, they are going hybrid, and the inside space has been re-imagined. Most of the interior walls have been knocked out and there are circular windows in some of the remaining walls that let you see from room to room. The whole back wall is sliding glass doors. The idea is to let you see more of the outdoors from any part of the building, which is very much in keeping with the nature-based philosophy of the school.
The Purple School is not quite back to the way it used to be, because a lot of things aren’t. Beth’s office, for example, never required people to come back to work in person and once people did start coming back it was mostly on an as-needed basis. Before she retired, she was only going into the office about once a week, occasionally twice.
Not all the changes covid caused were bad. Beth preferred working at home to working in the office and Lesley helped scores of young children forge a deeper relationship with nature when they stayed outside. One thing covid did, I guess, was to allow us to reimagine the status quo and consider if we even wanted to go back to baseline.
I realize there’s a certain amount of privilege in these examples. Not everyone has a flexible office job or sends their kids to private preschool. Some D.C. area public school systems have been using remote instruction during weather-related cancellations since covid, though, so there’s at least some wider applicability. Also, the tents in downtown Takoma Park that were erected for outdoor dining early in the pandemic are being replaced by a wooden gazebo so the restaurants on Laurel Avenue will now have outdoor seating for the foreseeable future.
Is there any aspect of your life that changed six years ago and never completely went back to the way it was?