Why seeing faces again has become so important

The instant the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that fully vaccinated people could safely remove their masks, I was off to the races.

Literally, as it turned out.

The 86th running of the steeplechase races known as the Carolina Cup took place last weekend in this little horse and erstwhile polo resort town. I saw almost no covered faces in a crowd of thousands. I joked to my husband that I didn’t recognize people without their masks.

The sight of so many smiles and cheeks and noses and chins was both jarring and joyous, as well as somehow unexpected. But of course people would be unmasked. Not only did we have permission from the experts, but Camden prides itself on ignoring most rules. Even so, it took me several moments to recognize what was so different: Everything was normal. Most of us have forgotten what normal looks like. We’ve forgotten what unmuffled voices sound like. We’ve grown unfamiliar with handshakes and hugs. I even observed several attempts at the social kiss, most of which were thwarted by the oversize hats that are essential to horse races and searing sun.

Had every single person in attendance been fully vaccinated? Doubtful, but the math is reassuring: More than 40% of South Carolinians have rolled up their sleeves for at least one shot. Eighty percent of the crowd comes from the home state. Otherwise, we were outdoors marinating in vitamin D with plenty of room to roam. Happiness was palpable and it wasn’t because of the horses, the catered picnics or the booze. It was freedom (and also the booze).

Dropping our masks may pose some risk to the unvaccinated, but the CDC’s announcement came at about the time people were ready to pitch them, no matter what. The discomfort is part of it, but mainly I think people just need to see each other again. It’s simply a part of being human. What happens to people living in a faceless society?

We don’t fully understand yet what we’ve experienced, but everyone can grasp that a mask blocks more than airborne particles; it separates us in profound and complex ways by masking the emotional cues we perceive through facial expressions and the very way we communicate with friends, foes, strangers and kin.

Wearing a mask has had its pluses, of course. Female friends talk about freedom from wearing makeup. Others confess that they sometimes wear a mask to avoid having to talk to people. Add a hat and sunglasses and you may as well be invisible, which is not a bad way to spend an hour or so here and there. But in the main, our masks have added another layer of alienation to sheltering and social distancing.

Adults could intellectually justify and sustain the psychic and emotional separation as a temporary health measure, but children and babies have suffered worse. Blocking children’s usually expressive faces seemed cruel if also necessary. Babies suffer developmentally without human faces to teach them how to recognize identities and emotions and learn language.

A couple I met at the races who had their 9-month-old twins in tow told me they worried that their children had had so little exposure to faces. The baby girl, I have to say, seemed overwhelmed by the sheer number of human mouths grinning in her direction. Quite a ghastly spectacle, I should think.

Michael Ungar, a family therapist and author who specializes in resilience, has written of such concerns on his Psychology Today blog. He wondered last December how children would be affected by fewer opportunities to study faces and discern emotions. “No one knows,” he wrote. “But, just like with academic deficits and way too much handwashing, the months that follow widespread vaccination for COVID-19 are going to demand of us a little extra effort to address children’s delayed development.”

Ungar recommends lots of faceto-face interaction between parents and children, which means removing distractions of convenience such as iPads, iPhones and other insulating gadgetry from children’s paws, and parents’ too. And lots of smiles, I would add. As babies know better than anyone, smiles are contagious. It shouldn’t take long before happiness catches on again.