Socially Isolated but Spiritually Connected
Before

Dear Mayfield,

I was talking with a younger colleague the other day. She is in her 30’s. She and her husband are both working at home now with their four school-aged children, the oldest of whom is 13. She told me that she has overheard each of her children start a sentence with these words: “Before Covid-19 we…”

Borrowing their words, I would say today that before Covid-19 I probably wouldn’t have seen these two cloth masks, one red and the other pink, hanging from the rear view mirror, in a sporty red car. I was out for my daily early morning walk, headed west on Aldine Street. Before Covid-19, if I had peered through someone’s windshield, I would more likely have seen a pair of retro fuzzy dice or a small stuffed animal or other object on a ribbon or length of elastic. Potential options would have included one of those tree-shaped, timed-release, vehicle air fresheners, a hang tag for a parking space in a lot or garage, a small flag, or a plastic ID for work dangling from a lanyard. Before Covid-19, cloth face masks weren’t an accessory carefully made or purchased in colors and patterns we like and that coordinate well with our clothing or even our vehicles.

Before Covid-19, I would have been aesthetically pleased with the reflection of spring tree branches splayed on the windshield in early morning light, especially as that reflection layered over the masks hanging inside. But it would have been something I noticed in passing. Instead, I chewed for blocks on the masks and the branches held together in the photograph. I wondered about the potential conversation that I might overhear if I grew quiet and listened patiently to them. The masks might have spoken from the perspective of changing habits for humans, new ways required to stay safe and well, and the unavoidable impact we have on one another, like it or not.  And the masks might have wondered with some worry about how we will all do when it gets warmer and the masks, trapping sweaty heat inside, become more uncomfortable.  For their part, the branches might have gently reminded the masks that it isn’t only humans who are at risk and troubled now. The new coronavirus and  Covid-19, the disease it delivers, have arisen from a planet so out-of-balance, so depleted and exhausted, so rarely seen and valued as anything but a pool of resources for human consumption.  Before Covid-19, the tree branches might have insisted it was easier for us to deny or pretend not to see the mounting evidence in climate, in worn-out geographies, in plastic-infested oceans, in dense, smog-filled skies, in melting ice caps, evidence that something must change and change now.

Before Covid-19 we enjoyed many things, we gathered in certain ways, we took a lot for granted, and all that may not be returning in our lives when our sentences instead  begin “After Covid-19…”  Before Covid-19, an urgent invitation had to be extended to us with more force that our eyes and hearts might be wide-open to new losses, new challenges, new flights of imagination, and new possibilities. Before Covid-19, that period of time, inspired the story linked here with its great realization, a gift from another colleague this week.  LINK  Peace, Martha