It’s been almost one year since my grandparents visited Idaho. Like many others their age, they have been especially cautious during the coronavirus pandemic. But now they’ve had their second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and have begun to emerge from the nightmare and embrace normal life—and their family—again.
I drive down the lane to my parents’ house, just a mile from where I live, and see Grandpa in the pasture flying a kite with three of my sister’s kids and Grandma in the barnyard feeding the goats with my sister’s baby.
I help my two daughters out of the car and Grandma rushes over to greet us. There are crinkles at the edges of her eyes, but I don’t need the clue. Her mask is gone and I can see her smile.
“Hello, little Lucy!” she says, but Lucy shies away.
“She’s nervous,” Grandma says. “She still has to get to know me.” The pandemic has lasted for more than half of Lucy’s lifetime, so the two of them haven’t had much chance to interact.
When I see Grandpa, he hugs me in his most particular and lovely way—with an extra dose of squeeze, cheek pressed against cheek. Six feet is just a distance now.
***
It’s March 2020. I’m watching the news and the regular broadcast is interrupted for a special report from President Donald Trump. This virus is unpredictable and spreading quickly, he says, so the borders from Europe will be closed on Friday. My husband calls from work.
“How much food do we have stocked up?” he asks. I open the pantry and assess our cans of beans, boxes of cereal, tubs of Nutella.
“I think we could survive a month,” I say.
“I’ll stop at the store on the way home.”
He works late, and I lie awake in bed wondering how our world was launched into apocalypse-like panic in a matter of days. I don’t even like to read dystopian novels, let alone live in one. Finally Brian returns with granola bars, canned chili, and fettuccine noodles. Apparently, Walmart was ravaged.
“They were out of spaghetti,” he says, and my gut lurches a bit. There’s nothing wrong with fettuccine, of course. But what does it say about the state of the world when you can’t buy a box of spaghetti?
Over the next days our phones buzz, alerting us of more cancelled events—March Madness, the NBA, the Olympics, and our worship services. On Facebook someone suggests using old t-shirts torn into rags as a toilet paper alternative. Easier on the cheeks than glossy magazine pages, I suppose.
By May hysteria is down to a simmer and we’ve settled into the new normal, which is not yet a wearisome term. I’m at the park with several other twenty-something moms and our toddlers. We complain about the indefinite closure of the places where we used to entertain our children and ourselves—the trampoline park, the zoo, and IKEA (Please, not IKEA). Someone mourns their cancelled anniversary trip to the Caribbean while another swipes her phone and then touches her nose.
“But only old people are dying from this,” I hear again and again and again. Of course, in time, we found out that wasn’t true, but it was true enough to keep panic at bay for people in my stage of life.
How convenient, to be young.
2020 staggers on and I continue to hug the people I love and buy my groceries without fear, even when someone occasionally breaches my six-feet radius to grab a can of soup. We find out that Brian’s two-year job rotation in Washington D.C. is cancelled and he will now work remotely, so we move to my hometown in rural Idaho.
Meanwhile, two not-so-young people in a red brick house in Bountiful, Utah celebrate Thanksgiving alone. Later, when my sister and I bring our kids for a physically distant visit, Grandpa begs Grandma to stay back and not touch them.
***
On the third day of their visit to Idaho, Grandma and Grandpa come over to see our new house.
“Now when I talk to you on the phone, I can picture where you are,” Grandma says. She helps me make bread using her own recipe. I’ve been making it for the past few months, but I haven’t perfected it yet. She shows me how to check that the water is warm enough to activate—but not kill—the yeast. She feels the cup with her wrist.
“That’s how we used to check baby bottles,” she says.
While Grandma helps me with the bread, Grandpa tightens the screws on my kitchen chairs, all nine of which have become rickety. He searched three different hardware stores to find the right tool for the job. It was a tricky fix, he says, so he’ll check on them every time he comes for a visit. He doesn’t want me to fret about it.
The bread bakes and Grandma sits on the couch with my daughter and my nephew. She watches Paw Patrol with them, asking about the pups and their various superpowers. She rubs their backs and strokes their hair. She absorbs them.
Before they return home to Utah Grandma says, “We just have to visit more often. It’s been so wonderful to be with you and your kids.”
***
I’ve often wondered what I’ll tell my own grandchildren about living through this pandemic. Certainly I’ll tell them about face masks at every grocery store checkout line alongside the gum and candy bars and available in camo and cheetah and every other imaginable pattern. I’ll tell them about large round stickers on the floor, reminding us all to stay six feet apart. I’ll tell them how we worried every time we got the sniffles, wondered if this was THE VIRUS and if we had given it to people who were immunocompromised. I’ll tell them about the anger on both sides of opinion, how initially the pandemic seemed to unite us, but then tore us apart. I’ll tell them how we wondered if the world would ever be normal again, what normal even meant anymore.
“Were you afraid you might die?” they’ll ask.
“Never,” I’ll say. “I was lucky to be young.”
In my mind I’ll see my grandparents—all of them—and remember how much they sacrificed and how little they complained. Then I’ll look at each grandchild’s face and hope I never have to choose between my life and my life. I’ll cuddle them close, and hope.
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