My Covid Fears Have Stopped Me From Simply Enjoying My Children
Survival mode yields no room for joy
I am tired and grumpy and even my morning coffee cannot yank me out of this funk. My five-year-old son stomps around the house, fists outstretched, punching the pantry door for no reason. The clutter in the kitchen is triggering — dishes that need putting away, “artwork” from the previous day of water coloring, and used masks that need laundering. My two-year-old daughter, Jordan, has already had diarrhea today; I’m on alert for other symptoms that may follow.
I am vaccinated but half the world is not. My kids are not — my son heads to summer camp masked. I recently bought a three-pack for him in cool neon colors. He puts his mask on his face after his socks and shoes, no matter how many times I tell him to wait until we actually arrive at camp.
Last summer, when we were still living in Seattle, it was the face shield. I bought one that looked like an astronaut’s helmet. I feigned excitement when I unwrapped it from its package. Chase asked to wear it. “Wow, you look like an astronaut!” I said. His teacher told me he loved it. But then in the car, he took it off and, itching his head, said, “I hate this thing.” His school asked us to bring in lotion for the kids’ red, chapped, overly-washed tiny hands. It’s been a full school year and two summers since my son has seen his teachers’ lips.
At the time, my daughter was fifteen months old and couldn’t walk yet. Our neighbor told us that by the time quarantine is over, she will be dating. As the summer came to a close, the Seattle weather returned to its infamous gloom, so we went to the mall to walk around during our morning “walking hours.”
The mall was quiet. The only patrons were elderly people doing laps and desperate mothers like me who brought toddlers here because we were sick of our homes. We glanced at each other knowingly and said things to our children like, “Not too close. Don’t touch.”
The kids and I rode the escalator and once at the top we saw some holiday decor. I noted the mall floors. It would have been a bad place to fall, but the kids were running up ahead and they seemed happy. I couldn’t tamp that down.
There were three steps to get to the bright Christmas decorations. Jordan insisted on walking by herself down those, but she couldn’t reach the railing so I reached for her. Then she turned away from me and landed on the hard floor. I instantly knew it was bad. I scooped her up and saw her front tooth had been knocked backward. The sight was jarring and panic pumped through me.
The crying started but barely made a sound for a few beats. Suddenly there was no one at the mall other than a security guard. I asked for a medic. We sat on the ground, blood stained my shirt. Jordan clung to me. The security guard asked if I wanted him to call an ambulance. I felt sick. I asked for ice and gauze and declined the ambulance. I called the dentist. Jordan looked like a jack-o-lantern.
She cried when I placed her in her car seat and I had to pry her hands off me to buckle her in. I called my husband and he met us at the dentist. En route, Jordan fell asleep. I knew her little body was exhausted from the trauma. I watched her through the rear-view mirror as much as I safely could.
The dentist was tall with friendly eyes. They saw this type of injury once a day. He told me it was Jordan’s personality that predisposed her to accidents like this — something about being fearless. He also commented on her boots — brown faux suede boots with a little sparkly side bow that I bought online from StrideRite. He might have said the boots caused the fall but I knew that wasn’t it. I blamed myself; I created her personality. I bought the boots. I took her to the mall.
He pushed her tooth back into place and for a minute we were okay. By the time we got home, the tooth has moved back again and we returned to the dentist the next day.
Jordan is a thumbsucker. The next week was torturous as she instinctively brought her thumb to her mouth only to realize it was now painful. I had joked to my friends about having a thumbsucker during a pandemic, “She’s either sucking sanitizer or Covid off her thumb. I guess for now I’d rather it be sanitizer.”
Over the next few months I was a broken record: “Slow down! Not too fast! You’ll hurt your tooth!”
She developed a scar on her lip and I wondered if lipstick would ever sit properly. My neighbor told me I had PTSD from that day at the mall. I knew she was right. An X-ray revealed that she broke a bone in her mouth from that fall. It has healed but it severed her root so her tooth is perpetually loose.
When my husband tells this story, each time he begins, “Since there wasn’t much we could do there, sometimes Kayla brought the kids to the mall.” He wasn't blaming me, but I still resent the pandemic and the Seattle rain which brought us to the mall that day. And I often remind my husband that we had only gone to the mall twice.
By the end of 2020, we moved to Austin, leaving the dark nights that started at 4 p.m., the constantly wet playgrounds, and the people who preferred to remain impassive behind their REI puffy coats and wore masks while driving alone in their cars.
Life here is a bit more livable. Kids play outside mostly without masks. There are fewer whispers of keeping our distance. We walk outside and the sun feels stupendous. Sometimes I say to my husband, “It’s February. We are in tee shirts.” And we smile.
Yes, we survived a move in the midst of the pandemic. We have already gone through the school year dodging Covid cases, and now the weekly emails of reported exposure to Covid begin again. It occurs to me that I have been robbed of enjoying my children for the past year and a half. Survival mode yields no room for joy. The Delta variant takes over headlines and I cannot bare to tighten our lives once again.
Kayla Mae Maloney is an actor and writer based in Austin, Texas.
