Until another bad play date, one Im still kicking myself for arranging, Isaac had no idea his parents were different or that he had anything to fear. It was raining that afternoon and I assumed no one would be at the school tennis courts, so we tugged on our rainboots and inched past the playground overrun with parents and kids, many not bothering to wear masks.
I wanted to call out those parents for keeping my child from playing there, in a space that should be his to share; I wanted to call them selfish, but I said nothing. They were probably exhausted to the bone like me, dragging something invisible and heavy behind them too, all of us a collective GIF of that cheesy-wonderful Brad Meltzer quote, Everyone you know is fighting a battle you know nothing about.
Isaacs friend Jonathan rolled up in a double wide stroller with his baby brother. The boys splashed in puddles on either side of the net for a few minutes before two other friends little guys we used to play with every day but hadnt seen in months unexpectedly appeared, bounding onto the court. In a flash all of them sprinted off in a pack, over to the playground, the anxious parents tailing them like foxes at a hunt.
Isaac started to follow but I caught him in my arms. We cant go there, I told him helplessly. Our family has different rules. We have to be especially careful of the germs. I carried him, crying from the playground, and away from his three best friends sitting shoulder to shoulder on a bench, swinging their legs in unison. In that instant he realized that we have illness in our house, that we have something more to fear than even the coronavirus.
Now, he regularly worries about the polka dots in my eye and the boo-boo on his dads brain. He brings us blankets and thermometers, although for the most part we feel well. Its not your job to make us happy or keep us healthy, I tell him, brushing the matted corkscrews from his forehead and feeling guilty about the price he pays for our diseases.
Recently, Jonathans mom invited us for a play date on her front lawn. She filled up two identical giraffe pools and the boys waded around, separated by a walkway we dubbed the Demilitarized Zone. It felt like summer for a second, like the old days when my son was first learning how to have and be a friend and no one reduced me to just the sick parent. That old life is so near yet so painfully impossible, for myself, for Isaac, for us all. There were masks and Lysol cans, but we couldnt throw our wet arms around one anothers waists, and we didnt know what the fall would bring.
Its been lonely at our house, sterile even. Sometimes Isaac stands at the open living room window and shouts hello to small figures zipping by on scooters beyond our front gate, but they just keep rolling by as though he is a ghost. After a while, he just wants to huddle on the basement couch in a smudge-brown blanket watching Captain Underpants, refusing to build pillow forts, draw comic books or do messy science experiments with me.read more
When Nobody Wants to Be in Your Pod
