Paddling Through COVID-19

Covid is the current in a Warner Bros. cartoon, drawing our collective canoe downriver toward the inevitable waterfall.

Except it is more cartoonish: We know there is a waterfall up ahead, but some of us are paddling toward the shore, some are paddling upriver, and some are not paddling at all--which is why, at this point, we cannot keep ahead of the current.

Those who are paddling upriver have grown very tired of paddling against the ceaseless current.  Those who have stopped paddling are saying the falls are not really that big and the strongest among us will surely survive it.

But what about the people who can't swim, have heart conditions, are out of shape, or were never given life preservers for some racist reason?

Well, say the non-paddlers, "Maybe they shouldn't be in the canoe in the first place."

But the canoe is life, so, we are all in the canoe. None of us has a choice about that.

I'm more sympathetic to those paddling upriver, against the current, though we won't survive that way. I understand that they want the economy open because they need to earn money to eat and pay rent.

I have friends who had good jobs and bright futures before Covid, but who no longer have jobs now. Their bright futures in the food industry have capsized.

I have retired friends who don't have to worry about money, but they have nightmares about being on a gurney in the corridor of a hospital, struggling to breathe, or being told that they will be put into a medically-induced coma and might never wake up.

I have friends whose senior year of high school was lonely, not at all what they had dreamed it would be.

Even I, who was awkward and shy all through high school, had a lot of fun my senior year. I had crushes, kisses, friends, adventures, and late-night parties on the beach. I laughed and sang and danced. We drove my friend's convertible with the top down, wind in our hair on a warm summer's evening. I wasn't into sports. I barely remember the graduation ceremony. I wasn't a kid who looked forward to making a graduation speech, or to being recognized as an honor students or an athlete. But a senior year is a moveable feast, and I piled up my plate from a narrow section of the buffet. And it was, surprisingly, delicious.

I have friends whose kids were looking forward to going to college, their first time living away from home. At best, they will have an abbreviated semester. They will be limited to a small social group. And the instant Covid breaks out on campus, as it probably will, all in-person everything will be scrapped. Student life to be postponed.

I know people who have experienced Covid first hand are offended by the idea that it all feels kinda Old Testament. It seems to imply that they or their loved ones or those in their care were God's chosen cursed. But collectively, in as much as we've all had our noses pointed at screens for so long, and the aspects of reality that we still enjoyed are being relegated to technology; and in as much as Trump, in my eyes, is a fine stand-in for Pharaoh (apologies to Yul Brynner), would anyone really find a plague of frogs surprising ?

I find the Black Lives Matter movement shines the brightest light on this whole benighted year. The rise in social awareness of what plagues our country (other than the Covid virus) gives me hope for a brighter future--Post-Trump, if not post-Covid.

I am hopeful that Trump's reign will come to an end, and this dilapidated democracy may yet prove "yar" (sea-worthy).

But how to avoid the waterfall that is Covid seems far less clear. We're a citizenry used to paddling our own boats. We don't know how to paddle together.