Finding Community After Covid
Last November, as fall crept slowly toward winter, I was holed up in my house staring at a teacher who was holed up in her house trying to teach my kid his multiplication tables. I was defeated, and most likely in desperate need of a shower, as I straddled the line between lethargy and fits of unbridled rage. I felt disconnected from the outside world, and I knew the holidays in whatever unfamiliar form they took, would only bring further isolation.
There were glimpses of normality during the bright months of summer – a drive to the South Dakota wilderness, jaunts to the beach, conversations held within the glow of a campfire. By the time fall rolled around, though, many of us had retreated back into our homes to protect those around us, no one knowing how much longer the pandemic would last or how much longer we would.
I remember a half-hearted Halloween in a friend’s backyard, her husband waving from the window having had a Covid exposure. Our kids hunted for candy in the grass as everyone maintained their six-foot bubble. It was something, but it wasn’t the same. I needed shared sips of hot cocoa and hugs from arms that knew it wasn’t quite time to let go. I missed book clubs around my dining room table, Wednesday mornings at church, and weekends spent with old friends. Socially distanced afternoons and talking screens weren’t cutting it.
This was not the community I longed for. The happy hour Zoom calls locked away in my makeshift office/pantry were not enough to pull me through. As it turned out, drinking my sorrows away would only prove more disappointing, one such night ending in an unfortunate pile of vomit on my bedroom floor. Self-medicating could not save me.
And so, I trudged along, savoring what little communication arrived and dreading the upcoming holidays. There would be no Christmas parties, our beloveds and their children spilling out from every corner of the house. We would take a pass on the gatherings of extended family that typically filled our December weekends. It was difficult to get into the spirit at all.
Much to my surprise, though, our family found the solitude to be magical in its own right. We were able to focus without distraction on our boys and the delight that overtook them with each slice of pumpkin pie or remembered ornament pulled from a dusty box. We invented new traditions just for us – an (advent)ure calendar with slips of paper announcing surprises. “Get your boots. We’re going on a night hike,” and “Midnight milkshakes!” competed for favorite with our nocturnal children.
It seems other families rediscovered one another, as well. 2021, the year we thought things would return to “normal,” has shown to be the year of cancelled plans once again. This time, it isn’t a state mandate or widespread fear keeping us apart. Having witnessed the sweeping loss across the globe and being granted the time to process the feelings that followed, maybe we realized our time was more sacred than we’d ever considered.
Over the past 10 months, even after vaccinations were sunk into arms and infection rates had dropped, my phone would buzz with a “Can’t make it tonight” or “Sorry. I think we are just going to stay home.” I sent a fair amount of these messages myself. Stepping away from the rat race allowed a closer look at how we really wanted to spend those numbered hours each day. Then, when the gates finally opened, what lay on the other side looked far less appealing.
Recently, I tried to fit back into that version of my pre-Covid self by throwing a fall party. The build-up was fun; it felt like old times buying decorations and planning activities. Then, the day came, and the guests came, and everything went as smoothly as a party with 30 small children can – but at the end, that feeling of disconnection that had haunted me for the past 18 months was still there.
I’d been surrounded by people. I’d chatted and laughed, and yet, with the bustle of kids needing bathrooms and band-aids, and the shallow small talk required of gatherings like these, I was left wanting. Aside from the moment I caught the moon cresting over the treetops, little connection was made. Again, I was defeated. Covid had stolen something that it seemed I could not get back.
The following week, I was invited to the warmth of a kitchen filled with just a handful of women and their babies. I was a stranger to everyone there and was running late as usual. Sitting in my car at a traffic light, I pondered whether or not to send that familiar “can’t make it” text. What would I really be missing, anyways?
Community.
From the comfort of an acquaintance’s chair, I found what I had been grieving almost every day since the world flipped inside out. Sharing a meal, breathing the same air, steadying a toddling child who was not my own, holding her chubby fingers – this is the stuff lights me up. These weren’t the faces I was used to, but that feeling was the same – the seeing and being seen, the opening of lives and the stories within them, the spark that ignites when people come together in community. After the isolation we’ve all experienced, this is the greatest gift we have to give one another this holiday season, an hour or two of our very precious time.
Ashley, Woman of a Certain Grace