t is a little after 2
p.m. on a grey
afternoon. My four kids and I are part way through yet another day of homeschooling. There are no playgrounds to play in, parks to run through, or museums to learn from. Earlier we took a short walk. With the five of us coming down the sidewalk, those we saw along the way crossed the street. Until now, a scenario where childhood carried within it the contagious threat of death rather than the exultations of an untarnished spirit was the stuff of dystopic horror films. How quickly a child becomes accustomed to a world that moves to avoid her. How it crushes her spirit though. The thought fills
I
me with an intense grief. A pain so deep within me I cannot shake it.
I spent most of 1987 and 1988 in and out of bunkers and basements. There was an hour of reading and math lessons on TV. The Iran-Iraq war saw a million people dead. 2020’s Covid 19 is not more frightening, but it is fundamentally different. Other tragedies leave people coming together, clearing rubbles, housing victims, and sharing an embrace. This new enemy of our
species attacks us where it hurts the most because it requires our physical separation, leaving us yearning for that which our genetics and biology, perhaps our entire spirit, crave the most. There is a reason we bring our hand to a fresh wound; a purpose behind kissing our child’s injury. But now, it is the very healing touch which can kill. Covid 19 has struck at the Achilles-Heel of humanity.