We wear the pandemic on our faces
We wear the pandemic on our faces
Many years ago when I was a young mother, my toddler son vanished from sight when I turned my back for a few seconds to water some flowers. Frantic, I ran to the street and looked in both directions, shrieking his name.
Nothing, nowhere. How could this be?
A few seconds passed when a police car suddenly materialized.
“Did you lose your child?” the officer asked.
“Yes,” I nearly screamed. “Did you find him?”
“No,” he said, “but you have that look.”
Horror is what he saw. Thanks to a nearby jogger, JC was found a block away, gleefully chasing a cat that had wandered by during that blink of an eye when mine was turned elsewhere. Happy ending. Lesson learned.
I’ve never forgotten the officer’s haunting words and the agonies they suggested. Apparently, he had seen the expression enough times to recognize it. I’ve thought of them again recently as I’ve begun to notice “that look” we can now ascribe to the pandemic.
As I take my morning walks, I can see the faces. The hellos are polite but the brows are deeply furrowed. They tell the story of a nation in shock, the fear and grief over the loss of the world they knew and may never know again.
The pandemic has created a new etiquette to go with The Look. It’s a mixture of politesse and pragmatism. Two strangers will smile and duck their heads almost bashfully as they attempt to dodge each other, as if to say: I’m so sorry. I’m sure you’re a very nice person, but you might also be a human droplet of viral death so, if you’ll pardon the expression, get the hell away from me. Sorry!
Then comes worse news. MIT researcher Lydia Bourouiba has published a paper suggesting that virus-infused droplets can travel as far as 27 feet. Her critics say that if such were the case, we’d all be sick by now, which is about as consoling as hearing Nancy Pelosi say, “Testing, testing, testing.”
The silver lining? That’s easy: families are staying home, cooking and eating meals together. Parents are home- schooling and probably not loving it but surely appreciating their kids’ teachers a bit more. We no longer debate quality versus quantity time with so much of both going around. People also have more time to think, reflect, read, create and complete long-postponed, home projects of importance, such as binge-watching “Ozark.”
But, the easy part is now over. The two-week, shelterin-place, stay- cation — which many people needed anyway to catch up on sleep or pay their taxes — has run its course. The harder, longer, home-alone slog is just beginning and could last two months.
Which raises the question: how long can previously freeranging Americans remain sane under, essentially, house arrest?
Meanwhile, we’ve become subject to an incessant barrage of terrible news, as well as the daily press briefings of President Trump, whose sudden flair for verbiage rivals that of the late Fidel Castro, who would speak for hours and hours while his subjects probably feigned rapt attention. One can’t help noticing, too, that many of Trump’s team members seem careful to preface their remarks with accolades for the president’s incredible leadership.
Those remarks are the opposite of reassuring, but you also get the idea the President relishes the salutes. Recall when Trump, having witnessed North Koreans “sit up at attention” to their Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, remarked that he’d like for his people to do the same to him? Well, hello, Pandemic. Trump has also recently said that Democratic governors “have to treat us well” if they want face masks and ventilators.
One dares not cross the supreme leader, one reckons.
Trump’s transformation — from first calling the virus a hoax to trying to use it as leverage only adds to the despair many are feeling. How can a country survive this test when its chief executive officer so lacks the virtues of leadership?
What’s clear from this reckoning and others to come is that, contra the we’re-all-inthis-together mantra, we’re all on our own. This means we need to wipe That Look off our faces and focus on staying well — inside our respective dwellings, comforted by the prospect that the curve will flatten and the virus will subside in time for the body politic to heal itself on Election Day.
It really has become a matter of life and death.