Scorekeeper.
We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.
Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly. It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death.
Describing the situation as a pandemic does not change WHO’s assessment of the threat posed by this virus. It doesn’t change what WHO is doing, and it doesn’t change what countries should do.
We have never before seen a pandemic sparked by a coronavirus. This is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus. — WHO Director-General 11 March 2020
***
We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think. — Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
***
What I wanted to, but couldn’t, say six months ago was this:
That there’s something about the anxiety that I feel grocery shopping here. That doing the conversions between pesos to dollars and realizing just how expensive some things are tugs at old not-quite-memories of grocery shopping with my mom when I was younger. That I can’t remember how old I was when she taught me about “white label” peanut butter in big tubs on the bottom shelf and how it was just as nutritious and maybe even more so because it had less sugar than Jif.
That it is a similar but not exactly the same anxiety I felt the last time I went shopping with Joe back in Belgium the week before Nicolas was born. That the trip was the last time I would go grocery shopping in over a year not because of the baby (although partially because of the baby) and not because of the Belgian sanitation measures limiting each household to one shopper, but because it had sent me into a tailspin to see so many of the shelves bare. That I had clutched my swollen belly as I waddled behind Joe through Albert Heijn, feeling the sting of tears welling up my eyes and willing them not to fall. That I was scared. Not only about the virus that we didn’t yet know enough about but about getting enough nutrition to be able to breastfeed. That the worry would feel silly twelve days later because my milk would never come in.
That I hadn’t thought about it in years but there’s something about the way the groceries were packed in their box one morning at Pricesmart that reminded me of those boxes we used to get the summer when Brother was a baby and Mom was struggling through Greek the first semester of her M.Div.
That, at 9, I knew I hated what seemed like a never-ending run of sausage and refried bean burritos but that it would take me until now to put two and two together: the boxes had been part of a community program offering highly-subsidized groceries to those who qualified. That burritos stretch.
That I know it’s different now.
That both here and back home, I am privileged in ways that I still can’t fully wrap my head around no matter how many times I try.
That the fear of going hungry is nothing but a ghost.
***
What I want to, and can, say now:
I used to think that resiliency was the art of getting through unscathed. And, that’s not far off from at least one definition in the dictionary: the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape.
But now I’m not so sure I buy into that. I don’t think we get through unscathed. I think that, if we’re lucky (and maybe with some good help), we get through… changed.
And that it’s up to us to do with that change what we will.
May my scathings be for good.
