72 Time February 28/March 7, 2022
move toward without wondering about quicksand
pits. It felt like maybe we were close. And then we
realized it was a mirage.
We’re all stuck in a pandemic—we’re all sub-
ject in some way to the uncertainty it creates—but
the puncture wounds have taken a billion different
shapes. I’d imagined the weight of teaching during
a pandemic and thought I had a pretty good sense
of how hard it must be, but I didn’t feel the weight
of it in my body until I returned to the building. It
made me wonder what we’d feel if we were able to
slip into each other’s worlds for even a morning. To
be in the ICU with health care workers, to watch
educators try to juggle safety and desperate par-
ents, to wait in prolonged isolation with those who
live in bodies especially vulnerable to this virus,
to make impossible decisions with small- business
owners as they try to stay afloat, to sit in the room
with people whose mental health is in crisis. Would
we start to understand one another, this pandemic,
the past two years, any better?
I had to leave that visit early—our childcare
plans changed when yet another person in our
orbit tested positive for COVID-19. It wasn’t an
unfamiliar experience. With our only child born
in May 2020, unpredictable childcare has been the
only kind we’ve known. Even so, the uncertainty
in my life is so small and manageable compared
with what others are dealing with. Now that I’ve
switched to freelance work, my schedule can be
flexible and, more often than not, is remote, and
we’ve gotten so much practice pivoting when the
plans change. How many times since Otto was born
have I thought, Soon, things will be safe, life will
settle, we’ll be able to rely on structure, only to feel
the ground give way beneath me again? Which is
exactly why I was taken off guard by my response
when I received the text. I should have been well
equipped to handle this by now. Instead, I felt like
I’d smacked into the bottom of a well, and I might
as well curl up and make a home there. My shoul-
ders and chest were tight with worry over the per-
son who had gotten sick, and I was already so be-
hind on work that I couldn’t think about it without
hearing my heart pound in my ears. I took Otto
home, wrapped myself in a blanket, and watched
him run as fast as he could back and forth across
the 5-ft. stretch of floor in our bedroom. We can’t
keep doing this, I thought. And then, Stop being so
dramatic. It’ll just be a few days. But I don’t think
my hopelessness was tied to any one day.
I don’t always know how to talk about it. I’m
doing fine; we’re really fine. But also, uncertainty
hangs heavy in the air around all of us. Will our
loved ones survive? Are we keeping them safe? Are
our lives and safety valuable to those around us?
Will we be able to find a COVID-19 test? Are our jobs
SOCIETY
secure? Will we ever get back to who we
were before this started? Will our rela-
tionships recover? Should we have that
celebration? Should we book those plane
tickets? Are we overreacting? Will things
ever get better? Uncertainty is a song I
can’t get out of my head. It hits us dif-
ferently, but I feel it wearing on every-
one in one way or another, leaving us
anxious or angry or humming with our
eyes closed and our fingers in our ears.
It feels like we might be approaching
some kind of turning point in this pan-
demic. There are signs that cases are on
the decline, and it seems like only a mat-
ter of time until the vaccine is available
for kids under 5. But what are we sup-
posed to do with these flickers of hope?△
The author with her son
Otto in September 2021