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Can we trust them? We’ve been here be-
fore and seen how quickly things can
take a turn for the worse. Are we sup-
posed to let ourselves anticipate safety?
Order? Reliability? And will it be safe
for all of us? Or just some of us?
I can see a tendency in myself to
soothe the discomfort of uncertainty by
insisting on a narrative of certainty—to
crush everything I can’t know or con-
trol into something as simple as a rock
I can clench in my fist. If those people
would just do these things, this would
all be over! I think conspiracy theorists
might be driven by the same desire to
banish the intolerable feeling of un-
certainty. But I’ve found that this im-
pulse to flatten a massive, complicated
problem into one small thing I can yell
about doesn’t actually solve anything
or even make me feel better. As much
as I trust the experts, I’m starting to re-
alize that knowledge and scientific in-
novation are only part of the solution;
they can go only so far without things
like understanding, collaboration, care,
commitment, support. And some days
it feels like we’re moving further away
from these resources. So I clench my fist
tighter, and my brain keeps spinning—
overheating like a blender left on too
long until I simply burn out. How do
we keep going without shutting down
or hardening into shells of ourselves?
YesterdaY, mY partner micah and
I started the morning like many others.
I read him the latest Omicron news,
and we speculated about numbers and
peaks and future variants. Eventually, it
became harder and harder to hear each
other, because Otto was howling at the
ceiling like a wolf pup. Howling is one of
his favorite things these days, especially
in a pack. Micah and I put our conjec-
tures to the side and started howling,
too. Three wolves, noses pointed toward
the ceiling while the morning light cast
shadows on the wall. It felt really good
to howl together.
I also felt a pang, watching Otto pull
us out of our fretful dialogue. Will he
remember his parents as distracted and
stretched thin? Are we raising him to
be stressed out and fearful? What is it
like for your entire life to exist under
the banner of a pandemic? Everyone
is flummoxed by time these days—
How has it been two years? And when did that
happen? A month ago? A year? We’re untethered,
free-floating. Micah and I had been drifting into
an anxious future when Otto yanked us back to
the moment we were actually in and the toddler
squirming in footie pajamas between us.
It makes me wonder if there’s a way to stay pres-
ent without getting swallowed, to keep on without
turning to steel, to let uncertainty be big and to
feel the fear of it, while also finding tiny islands of
certainty, spots on the map to mark with a push-
pin and tether us to solid ground. I don’t know if
I’ll have childcare next week, if our local hospital
will have a bed for my high-risk mom if she should
need it, or how we’ll ever heal from this. But there
are small things I do know, and when I feel my
brain whirring, I can grasp hold of them. Like right
now, this is my tongue, pressing against the backs
of my teeth. I’m here. This is my hand cupping
Micah’s cold fingers like a snug turtle shell. We’re
here. These are the sounds of my baby jumping to
the beat of “Heart and Soul” like a heavy-footed
bunny. Right here. Later, when it’s dark, these are
our voices singing the same three songs we sing
to Otto every night—the first my dad sang to me
when I was little; the second comforted me when
I was an overwhelmed teenager; the third Micah
heard on his way home the day we found out I was
pregnant—three points to chart a path. I’m here;
he’s here; we’re here. Mark the spot, before we’re
inevitably sucked back into the storm.
The pushpins in the map don’t change any of the
uncertainty, don’t solve any of the problems caus-
ing the uncertainty, and don’t enact widespread
change. But I’m trying to assemble some survival
tools for the long haul. Because the truth that might
be even harder to reckon with is that this pandemic
is not the only uncertainty keeping us from per-
fect peace. Uncertainty is baked into life, ines-
capable and bewildering. My map also marks the
spots when I became paralyzed at the age of 3, when
Micah was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 33,
when Otto’s screaming, wriggly body hit the air and
I realized that the more love you have, the more
terrifying life’s unpredictability becomes. When I
look at it square in the face, it’s too much to bear,
actually. So if I’m going to keep at this—keep mov-
ing, keep loving, keep showing up for the ones right
here—I need some tools. After two years of COVID-
19, each of us has crafted our own: the anchors
we put down when faced with a future we can’t
predict. This one is mine—that I can name what I
don’t know, but I also know what I have. The pan-
demic isn’t over yet, but maybe this tool will allow
me to stay soft and present a little while longer.Taussig is the author of Sitting Pretty: The View
From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled BodyHOW DO WE
KEEP GOING
WITHOUT
SHUTTING
DOWN OR
HARDENING
INTO
SHELLS OF
OURSELVES?
△
A family selfie from
February