It was my day, but they were the present, in a way.
Purchases and delivers groceries to the blind
COOPER WAISBERG WHO CELEBRATED HIS 18TH BIRTHDAY BUYING AND DELIVERING GROCERIES TO BLIND PEOPLE,
Eighteenth birthdays are a big deal. Eighteen means you are an adult, almost, and can vote and legally drink in three provinces. Eighteen means you are another step closer to whatever comes next.
What was coming next for Cooper Waisberg, in midMarch, was his 18th birthday party in early April. When he turned 16, Waisberg and his buddies played mini- putt. At 17, they got locked into an escape room, and problem- solved their way out. For 18, Waisberg was thinking about going go karting, until he was thinking about what we have all been thinking about for over a month now, that is, COVID-19 and social distancing, and families collapsing into themselves while trying to figure out a new normal amid the new unfathomable reality of being alone, but, somehow, together.
Go karting with friends was not happening, Waisberg knew, but his birthday still was, and so he needed a Plan B.
“This was a milestone birthday for me,” Waisberg says, using his older brother Ethan’s phone, and speaking from his parents’ home in north Toronto. “I still wanted to do something meaningful, something I’d never forget.”
Waisberg is a shaggyhaired, thoughtful kid. He attends a small private school. He started a French club there. He used to be a top athlete — tennis was his game — but a serious concussion caused by a freak accident involving the trunk of a car put an end to that. He suffers chronic back pain. Some days, he is so stiff he can barely get out of bed. When his concussion symptoms were at their worst, he would have trouble with his vision. When the fog began to lift, he started volunteering as a sighted- guide for the blind, which gave him an idea for his birthday.
With $ 150 in birthday money, time on his hands and an older brother home from university, Waisberg went grocery shopping. The boys borrowed their mother’s black SUV. Ethan did the driving as they hit three stores, exhausting Cooper’s funds on non- festive supplies: toilet paper, cleaning supplies and canned goods.
The Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, a support network/advocacy group for the visually impaired, gave the brothers three names and addresses. On April 4, they made their first delivery, and on April 5 — Waisberg’s birthday — they made two more, dropping the necessities of pandemic life to three blind seniors in different locales around the city.
“It just felt like the right thing to do,” Waisberg says. “It was definitely different than going go karting. It was my day, but they were the present, in a way, and I was blown away by how grateful they were.
“One woman, her name was Josie, she offered to knit us a scarf.”
Waisberg’s Mom, Jennifer, served his favourite meal after the drop- offs: chicken curry with rice. For dessert, another favourite — homemade cheesecake — only without 18 candles on top since, says Waisberg, “that would have been too much.” But isn’t it all too much? Eighteenth birthdays, proms, first kisses, summer jobs, university to head off to and the wondrous optimism of youth, where every glass is half- full and friendships are made for life — and life seems made for the young. Yet here we are, young, old, and all the in- betweens, imprisoned by the uncertainty of what comes next, and when.
Time is passing. The curve is flattening, we hope. But so is the horizon for the Cooper Waisbergs of the planet to get to be teenagers. For an adult, time is more elastic. Work is still work, only crazier. Parenting is still parenting, only with some novel twists. We grind on. It is the kids’ who are breaking our hearts.
“I really miss seeing my friends,” Waisberg says.
Waisberg was elected student council vice president, and was a member of the prom planning committee. The class of 2020 had a venue picked out, a theme — moonlight in Paris — and a date, May 1. As of midMarch, Waisberg hadn’t asked anyone to go with him, but he was planning to. As of today, it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Prom was going to be a special night for me and my friends,” he says.
The Waisberg brothers play road hockey daily, for two hours at a stretch. One brother will pretend to be Sidney Crosby, and the other Connor Mcdavid. When they get bored of hockey, there is always driveway tennis, and when they get bored of tennis, Cooper has invented a customized indoor basketball hoop, a business concept he believes is perfectly suited to the Quarantine Age. Then there is schoolwork to do, online Scrabble, Google meetups with friends and another birthday to look forward to — next April.
“I still want to go go karting,” Waisberg says. “But I’ve been thinking, for next year, it would be nice to do something even on a bigger scale to help the blind, so, really, I think this was just the start for me.”