On Today's Metrics

I saw a picture from last December when we all dressed up for StarWars and went to the movies. I remember, we bought three big bottomless barrels of popcorn and huge sodas to share. We walked around the outside shopping mall in costume, enjoying the stares at all eleven of us. (One daughter was still in exams at school). It was a carefully crafted and yet carefree memory that seems much further away than 365 days. Everything about that evening is not possible now.

We've had nine hundred fifty-eight deaths since we started tracking Covid-19 cases in our county alone, even with the restrictions we've endured over the course of now nine months. Montgomery County, Maryland is stricter than most places, and still, the numbers keep going up, because people bustle, people shop, and people want to believe somehow, it's over.

Today, five hundred fourty-four people were diagnosed with Covid, and the beds in acute care and ICU for patients suffering from this disease are at 81 and 76% capacity respectively. These numbers are beyond what the county wanted to have for opening up, and yet somehow, that is the discussion in the arenas of policy making, in the halls of government.

Thinking it would be nice is not science or policy, it's wishing. Big picture, I would like to see my mom and siblings and their children and my husband's family. Little picture, I would like to be able to go impulsively into stores and shop, like tonight when we made soup, extra french bread would have been nice.

Having the liberty to do as one will would be nice, but the price would be more people who know someone in that ever growing total who died; more people who cope with someone who is permanently affected. It isn't worth the bread, and as a county, we don't have the beds. It is a nothing of a sacrifice, to tell one's self "no," and yet a necessary nothing.

It would be nice to have birthday parties, but I don't want to host funerals no one can attend. It would be nice to travel, but every trip leaves a wake we don't want to have lead to a wake. All of what we want would be nice, but a civil and just society requires that we surrender what we want and would like, for what will ensure as many of us can be, still are. The liberty to do as one wants still exists, but at the price of others. That's not a civil society, that's a nation of islands, of souls who do not mind as long as they do not pay the cost and do not presume they will pay the cost for doing what they want.

We would like to be able to be fully present to each other, before this alters how we cope with life permanently. My youngest daughter walks on the balls of her feet, and has so despite our best efforts for so long, she must wear casts to relearn how to walk properly, to reallign her hips and ensure she retains full range of motion. It is not a fun process but it is necessary. We are going to need casts of sorts to cast off the rigidity of this type of living if we must go on with this kind of living. We must remember, this is temporary, and what we don't want, is permanent scars from the process.

So hold on, hold onto today, and be kind to everyone because everyone is enduring this trauma, this long winter of discontent, and everyone longs for the freedom we all took for granted and ignored all our lives until this past year. Hold onto all the necessary nothings that take place in this sort of quarantine. I am reading to my children and recognizing all these days here, are stollen summers and snow days even with all the assignments and tasks and fatiguing zooms attached. This time won't last forever, and all this time now, will be remembered as a gift if we help shape the way these moments are spent with each other.