Musings on a pandemic in America

There's one thing we absolutely all have in common when we reflect on world-changing, life-altering events. It's our stories. Your experience of an event is different from my experience of that exact event, even if we were together when the event happened. We'll all be swapping COVID-19 stories forever, I'm sure. That's part of how we process these overwhelming things, how we wrap our heads around the incomprehensible, how we comfort ourselves and others. We need to bring it down -- get it personal -- so we can cope with it. Otherwise it's too big, too global, too much for us.

To what degree media exposure controls our narrative is something we should ponder, but I'll leave the conclusions to people far smarter than I'll ever be. 

A generation quickly leaving us remembers what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed, when the Allies declared victory in Europe, when the atom bomb was dropped over Japan. They talk(ed) about these events for the rest of their lives.

Another, later, generation recalls what they were doing when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Few people then alive had lived through a presidential assassination, and most weren't sure how to react. For my generation, we talk about how we heard the news and how our parents tried to explain it. If they explained at all (it was the subject of vigorous debate between my parents, with Herself arguing for "not telling jillie" and Jack asserting he sure as hell would tell jillie).

Then, in 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded, leaving another indelible imprint on our collective consciousness. How could this have happened, we asked each other, once we could speak after a few hours of stunned silence? The people of NASA were, to a certain extent, national heroes. They couldn't have screwed things up this badly. We felt it -- we felt the gut punch of failure and disaster -- and we weren't sure how to respond. But we still tell our stories, pouring out to each other where we were when it happened, how we heard the news, how we cried or gasped or begged for it not to be true.

Then the big one -- 9/11/2001. The unspeakable, the unthinkable, the unfathomable hit us from behind. We reeled, we wept, we questioned, we begged for answers, some of us swore vengeance while others pleaded for peace. We lit candles. We went into a war footing. We held hands and held each other. We're still dealing with the fallout, from racism and xenophobia to conspiracy theories (a hallmark of every Inconceivable Big Event) to the good stuff -- a better understanding of our kin from a culture and a faith tradition materially different from anything most of us knew before. And we still talk about it. We will always talk about it.

Now we're dealing with a pandemic that has hit hard on American soil. And once again, we have no idea what to do with it. We're in various stages of shock, disbelief, apprehension, grief, anger and restlessness. (I know I'm cycling through 'em all with the speed of a teenager's mood swings.) Time will tell how the stories spin out, but they will spin out. Five years from now, we'll recall how incensed we were with toilet-paper hoarders, how surprised we were at how fast it changed our daily lives, and how we improvised to cobble together something that felt "normal." We'll laugh about how goofy the masks looked, and we'll share lighthearted anecdotes about quickly texting a friend to say that the OmniMart has chicken and she'd better get over there right away.

What's the common thread in all these earth-shattering events? The stories, your stories and mine, the stories of the overworked triage nurse, the frantic food-delivery guy, the mom with a high-risk newborn. Just stories. Everyone's stories -- the stories of the grocery stock person pulling double shifts for two weeks straight, the grouchy Hawaiian lady down the street who I finally wrangled a smile out of, the frantic parents trying (pretty much at gunpoint) to figure out how to homeschool their children, the cynic who says "it isn't that bad," the teacher who hates being grounded and misses the buzzy energy of a room full of first-graders, the priest who desperately wants to shepherd her flock but has to figure out how to do it from afar. The stories will go on and on, as stories do, and they will stick with us forever.

Keep your stories -- do it now -- do it however works best for you. COVID-19 stories will probably be mostly dismal, but there will also be humor and beauty in there. Jot down fragmented notes, practice daily journal writing if structure works better for you (what's that like, anyway?), give yourself some time that's quiet and free of screens and other media to see what imprints on YOUR mind and what will endure over time. Maybe let Wordsworth's "spots in time" guide you. Shut off the outside chatter and let your mind do what it will for a while to see what sticks.

And stay safe. Take care of yourselves and those you love so we can all hear your stories when this madness is behind us.

Love,

jillie