So, it happened. My family caught COVID last month. We had a sense it was heading our way when cases started appearing in our child’s kindergarten class. She had a bit of a sniffle so we tested her at home and it came up positive. That was a Sunday.
We cancelled plans and pulled her from school, I cancelled my clients and planned to stay home with her.
Then I got it. Then my husband got it. The reality of housing for MOST American families, is there’s no way to distance from each other. We have one bathroom.
Two years ago, when this all started, I remember talking to my dear friend Kelly. I was trying to figure out how we could isolate in the house– do we move the sick person into the shed? There’s not quite room for a twin bed in there but we could do a sleeping bag… And Kelly was like, girl, look at your house- If one of you catches it, y’all are all getting it. And she was right.
So we three huddled down. The good was also the bad.
The good was that our daughter was not very sick. She had nasal stuff and a bit of a cough, half a fever one day, good energy throughout.
That is all so good. It was also very hard.
Because I was NOT so lucky. A month later I am still recovering from COVID. My energy got hit HARD, I spent days in bed. Or I would have if I didn’t have a little one who kept insisting we COULD go to the park because she would wear a mask (nice try kid but no).
Then I made the mistake (#1) of logging onto one of the mommy groups. A few Kaylas* were talking about masks at school.
*Kaylas are millennial moms who would mock their high school teachers and think they were being clever by just being contrarian. They are usually white and often found near country clubs or on ranches.
The Kaylas were saying how masks at school are dumb. I took a deep breath and chimed in (second mistake) that I know it’s hard and we’re all looking forward to getting through this wave, but until our community rate is lower, we really need to keep it up, and as a family that had just had/has it I’d really implore everyone to keep masking for awhile. (I could have just scrolled by, but I didn’t.)
This Kayla Ha-ha’d my comment and came after me, “Well clearly masks don’t work if y’all got it, LOL. Most people are walking around in old dirty crusty masks.”
I should have logged off, but I didn’t (Mistake #3).
I could have taken a breath, but I didn’t (Mistake #4)
I replied (Mistake #5).
I told her that her callousness and cruelty was truly astounding.
This accomplished nothing.
I know there have always been assholes. But Kaylas are a special breed of mean, formed in the forge of Y2K.
As teenagers, Kaylas and their millennial counterparts existed mostly in a non-digital space. In real life, side by side, breathing the same air. They’d say shitty things under their breath or aside. They’d sass the teachers and usually get away with it. They were never very academically inclined but they were not and are not stupid.
As adults, Kaylas and their millennial cohorts live huge chunks of daily life online. This allows the callousness to spike towards cruelty and avoid accountability (not that they ever faced much of it to begin with).
But I digress.
Regardless of the mistakes that I made, I think there is an important lesson in this. (Beyond: DON’T ENGAGE!!), and that would be this: There is something deeply broken in us, if we have reached the point that we laugh at a child getting sick.
Also: stay off social media when you’re sick.
Confession: the petty ugly part of me really wants these Kaylas to go through what I did. I don’t want their kids to be sick, but I want THEM to be sick while their kids stay energetic. I know that’s fucked up and I was just talking about the callousness of our society and here I am. I don’t really want that to happen, but there is a lower part of me, a petty, vindictive piece that wants to shrug and go full cheekbone with “You could have imagined sympathy, but instead you’ll need to experience empathy.”
Within my rage and reactivity is a grief, that these women were talking about coordinating a mask refusal at school “if we all send our kids without one…”
As someone who has worked in advocacy for a couple years, I am grief stricken to see these women finally mobilize over THIS, and like TWO WEEKS before it’s about to be lifted anyhow? You don’t show up for gun safety, you don’t step up for our reproductive freedom, you don’t care enough about clean air and water to say a damn word but NOW you’ll band together? Over indoor masking for children during a freaking pandemic while our community numbers are over 10%?? Are you fucking serious, Kayla??
I know I’m being judgmental, that it’s easier to tackle one concrete thing like a mask, than existential crises, but I feel just like I did in elementary school. Just as I did in high school. We are racing in the wrong direction. As a collective, we are sinking away from what we could be. Our integrity, as a whole, is atrophying.
Perhaps that is my privilege showing. Perhaps I’ve been naive in my attempted optimism and should have stayed in the cynicism of my adolescence. Perhaps there’s never been any collective integrity.
But I have witnessed the golden threads of goodness that run through people. I have encountered courageous and generous women who keep pushing the needle, who are relentless in their pursuit of a better tomorrow. I know that there have always been and there will always be folks who bend the arc toward justice.
How do we amplify those voices, and not the snickering snide asides of the comment section?
I suppose that part is up to me– to choose who I listen to, who I turn to, and breathe with them rather than stewing over the Kaylas.
At the park yesterday I noticed the early blooms on the trees. And the trash cans underneath. They were both there– the flowers and the garbage. I decided to look at the flowers.
So today, I won’t focus on the Kaylas. I will listen to the wind. As a millennial mom I can choose to log off and live in the analog world. And that’s the plan for today.
Pretty Good Ugly 