☤ Dear Son: Pandemic Edition ☤

You are yelling “no” from your crib, yelling “no” before 6 a.m. No one has even come in to tell you the day’s plans, the things for you to yell a proper “no” at and then throw your water cup, your Peppa doll, your breakfast. You’re lying there, I can see you on the monitor, lying there and yelling “no!” You are not having a nightmare, your eyes are open, you are awake. You are awake and ready to tell the day no.

            I am also awake, I’ve been awake longer than you. I get up early to have my coffee in a quiet room and think about the day before me and all the things I’d like to do but can’t, all of my own noes, all involuntary. For example, no long, leisurely stroll in the park with you this morning, to the playground or the zoo, where we might pack our lunch and eat it there with peacocks pecking crumbs from our feet.

            Another no: you can’t go to daycare, as much as I’d like to take you there, as much as I miss the morning battle over which shirt and what pants and oh my god it’s 8:45 can you please let me put on your socks? I would kill for that fight, that test of wills, because it would mean things were normal again, that you would be going to your playmates and your teachers and you would have circle time, paint pictures, and they would take you on your own long, slow walk to the park, the playground.

            And what could I do then? I could go for a run in the park, passing strangers mere inches from my elbow, the luxury of near contact. And then come home, shower, work uninterrupted in my quiet corner, do the laundry without wearing a face mask in the elevator.

            But those are boring things—mostly I imagine the day when I can plan again, for you, for us. Everything is now on hold—our summer plans, visits to friends, family. A cousin’s bar mitzvah postponed, another’s graduation gone virtual. A wedding canceled indefinitely.

            When the world opens again, my son yelling “no,” it means possibilities. It means choices can be made; it also means nothing is ever going to be the same.

            All the plans we were making before are scotched, out the window. We now need to revise our visions for the future. Kindergarten applications were looming and we are in the wrong zone for the right school. Maybe instead of moving one district over, we just move altogether—up or down, left or right, away from this, the city of my birth, the only place I have ever lived?

            We’d daydreamed about it sometimes, before, but now it seems like it’s on the Scratchpad of Possibilities. On our list of things we might or might not say no to. That is, will we decide that in light of the current dissolution of world order, the threat of pandemic disease taking everything to its knees, will I tell Brooklyn, New York, “NO!” for the first and last time?

            Will we become one of those families writing goodbye letters to a city, finding succor in less crowded, greener places? Goodbye to all that, as we take route 9, our furniture following us in its own moving truck, the cats howling in their crates, you asleep in your car seat, unaware that everything is beginning again.

            Or better, we ditch the destination altogether. Instead of the truck holding our furniture, it will hold us, it will become our home. We will live on wheels, roaming, up the coast, across, vagabonds, traveling where the safety of a moment takes us, seeing the great big country as a whole for the first time, so that you, dear son, can learn there is so much more to say “no” to than your crib, your room, this apartment, the building, the block, the street, the neighborhood, the city, the world.

            All of this can be yours. If it’s still there when it’s time.