A bright moment brings us together

Last weekend, we chased down the comet Neowise. It was past our boys’ bedtime, but once I explained that it wouldn’t return for almost 7,000 years, they had to join the hunt. Because trees blotted out the view around our deck, we drove to a darker patch of the neighborhood with clearer sight lines. We found the Big Dipper and then searched closer to the horizon. Was it … could it be …?

Through our binoculars, we found the snowball, trailing a tail that had the look of a bridal veil. When the boys shouted with excitement, we shushed them. “You’ll scare the neighbors.”

“I see smoke!” Gege said, after he spotted the tail. “That’s it,” we said. “When it comes back, maybe humans won’t be on Earth anymore,” Didi said. “Like in ‘WallE,’ ” referring to the animated Pixar film in which people have retreated onto a spaceship after they polluted the planet.

“Maybe,” I said. I didn’t want to share my dark thoughts: At the rate we’re going, our species may be extinct long before then. Yet I also felt connected to everyone turning their gaze to the heavens, at a time when we spend our days at a distance from one another. That’s part of the pleasure of celestial sightings: the phenomena above, and the humanity below, united in our curiosity and wonder.

During the solar eclipse in 2017, at a writing conference in Vermont, I hiked to a lake and swam in its chilly waters with friends while taking in the show in the sky. In 1986, I peered through a telescope at Halley’s Comet at the Chabot Space and Science Center, solemnly thinking how it would return in threequarters of a century.

These memories are bittersweet now that it’s unclear when Americans might gather again. Worldwide, even countries where strong, smart leaders quelled the coronavirus have to remain vigilant against another wave.

Though the recent results from the Oxford vaccine trials are encouraging, I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much — not in a week that has felt unrelentingly dark: the heartbreaking, utterly preventable catastrophic outbreak at San Quentin State Prison that has continued, as well as federal agents swooping into Portland, Ore., that make me fear what will happen elsewhere now and after November’s presidential election.

I’d wondered what the summer would hold, and at first, our family ventured out cautiously, joyfully — masked up, outfitted with hand sanitizer, wipes and groceries from home.

Then, as COVID19 case numbers rose here and around the country, I secondguessed myself, wondering if we should have stayed home.

Now, as schools finalize their distancelearning plans, the news has been crushing — as much as I anticipated it, as much as I tried to steel myself.

In our district, the proposed schedule will divide each class into two groups, toggling between live instruction and independent work time. It seems much more rigorous than the crisis learning we collectively slogged through in the spring;

But the greater rigor comes with long stretches of necessary parental oversight, monitoring when and where my fourthgraders will have to log on, helping them stay on track in class and understand concepts.

Parents have been debating whether to form pods with other families, raising questions about how to address the needs of their children without exacerbating educational inequalities that have left many further behind. I’m furious and frustrated by the lack of coherent national leadership that resulted in the rampant spread of the coronavirus.

The gender divide has deepened amid the pandemic. This past spring, in the depths of the shutdown, among heterosexual couples with two working parents, mothers of young children reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers. According to the new study, the gender gap in work hours grew by 20% to 50%.

Such setbacks have longterm career consequences, especially as the economy falters, and I’m already dreading the difficulties ahead.

Neowise is passing out of view. In ancient times, comets were considered a message from the gods, a possible harbinger of doom. In the days ahead, I’ll try to remember what it felt like to look up at the brightness, steady in the gloom.

At the rate we’re going, our species may be extinct long before the comet returns.