Few who knew my mother would take issue with the proposition she was a saint. Her patience level was extraordinary, never more so than each morning during the jr. and high school years of her three boys. And as was the case in many other areas throughout those formative days, her first born tested her near limitless calm the most. I was a daily pain in the ass no parent deserved, least of all a glorified soul like my mom.
My junior year in high school, after we had moved several miles further from the Winston Churchill campus, things got particularly thankless. The bus came by at a God-awful hour, and worse, took a preposterously circuitous route through some of the area’s most bucolic roads, a trip that took almost an hour to complete, and seemed twice that. Since my little brother had to be prepared – with a bit less but still taxing amount of grief – for his departure to elementary school, the possibility my mother could drive me did not exist. Moreover, even when I secured a driver’s license, my father made clear I would not be driving my mother’s car to school… ever. Therefore, in an era just before Ted Bundy began to impinge on our personal safety sensibilities and hitchhiking went the way of the 8-track tape deck, my only available option to avoid the school bus was sticking out the old thumb.
Hitchhiking back then was like flying is today, it could be heaven or hell. Things could go just right or very wrong. I could get picked up by the pretty older sister of a friend on her way to school as well, making for a pleasurable, even intoxicating trip with zero delay; or I could shiver in the rain as one heartless ingrate after another passed me by. I could have a stress-free trip with commuters on their way to work, or a nerve wracking affair with a creeper who was certain I “sinned way too much.” But regardless how bad hitching could be, the bus never gained more luster in my eyes. Either way, getting me out of the house was near always more drama than my wonderful mom should of had to endure.
This family history has made for the richest of irony during the last half dozen years, as my son Luke has risen with the sun every week day on the school calendar, year in and year out, selecting his wardrobe and packing his lunch, part of a routine he only wants to repeat without anything other than full enthusiasm. Watching him joyously sprint up to the corner to meet his bus is something his parents never tire of; it always fills our hearts with love… every single time. My mother loved it as well, until she passed suddenly. We laughed together several times about how incongruous my parenting experience was to hers, even factoring in my daughter’s best efforts at making the AM difficult.
Covid did a number on my son’s piece of mind. Worst of all was cancelling in-person school. Autism is very much an anxiety disorder, and reliable routines are essential to providing the balance required for Luke to frame his present experience in a way he can link to future plans. It’s a process most modulate innately; for Luke it is work made tremendously more difficult when sudden variables replace constants he previously relied on. Without school everything else became chaotic. Left to his own devices with no set plans, he worried… and worried some more.
Throughout the last year Luke has looked to a return to school as the gold standard for “the end of stupid Covid.” Virtual classes have only reinforced his dismay, often becoming “trigger” events for meltdowns that take a couple hours to talk him down from. The gap between school’s cancellation and any sense of normalcy his mother could create with an improvised schedule of activities she would heroically put together throughout the week was often simply to vast for him to bridge without dread about whether things would ever make sense again. No matter how often we sought to calm his fears by promising a vaccine was coming and “as soon as everybody gets their shot, things will become normal,” we couldn’t promise what he needed most to hear… when that school bus would return. Now it has.
The American public wasn’t so different from Luke as Covid descended on the country. We are as wedded to routines as he is, and upsetting them is something we’ll go to extremes to avoid. The difference is the consequences created by the tantrums, not the measures necessary to preventing them. More than anything else, what real leadership would have looked like last March was telling us exactly what we didn’t want to hear, but then focusing on the steps necessary to get back what we were losing, one message always in pursuit of one goal: keeping people safe. The idea preventing infection and economic well being were mutually exclusive could only have germinated under the most bankrupt, even nefarious leadership.
That one year later we are now divided exactly along that deceitful notion confirms both how damaging a horrible President can be, and the relative ease in which the worst instincts too many harbor can assert themselves under societal stress. From the start, like Luke, the nation looked for honest assurance and certainty, united in a willingness to “flatten the curve.” But instead of a plan grounded in best practices, we got lies and chaotic recriminations that were only employed for one purpose… to avoid responsibility, the exact antithesis of leadership. Instead of the goal of keeping us safe, we got reducing Donald Trump’s political liability, which Fox/AM translated into mindlessly militant libertarianism, which predictably became 525, 000 dead and counting. The Biden team now simply provides what probably any other Administration save one would have given us. Tragically, the damage has been done… on many levels.
Last week, watching Luke once again run with a care-free gait to meet his early AM bus was bittersweet. His most important routine restored, our burden is now much lighter, even if neither Sue or I has yet to receive a shot. Seems we’ll be rolling the dice a while until our number gets called; I’ll take that chance. Luke has always asked for little and now again has much of what he needs to be happy. That is a blessed relief for me, worth more than most anything else.
Yet and still, how can we celebrate after so much needless carnage, after America failed so badly to address this crisis with our collective humanity in tact? Whatever the worst scenario was last March, more than a half million dead in one year was surely within shouting distance of it. We’ve more than normalized that tragedy; incredibly, the MAGA political class is despicable enough to actually take bows for causing it, conflating their servility to Trump’s manslaughter with courage in the face of political correctness, refusing to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands who perished as even collateral damage. Whatever light we are beginning to see at the end of this tunnel, they do their best to dim.
Tucker Carlson hissing for his zombie faithful to think thrice about getting vaccinated, while all of the usual MAGA suspects are railing for 100% maskless reopening just as Covid case numbers and deaths are finally beginning to dip, is par for the Fox/AM course, as criminally reckless as it is predictable. Recent CPAC absurdities portend a 2022 election cycle filled with revisionist GOP talk tracks at odds with the truth and eager to ignore a death toll created by shameful expediency to the wretched core’s fear and loathing.
Almost exactly one year ago the DR posted that, with a grave crisis upon us, our humanity was everything:
“It’s in us all and will get us through this; we simply need to hold it close…Never forsake it or we are lost.“
Indeed… BC