Community in the time of COVID
Once we enter adulthood, and especially parenthood, maintaining and building new friendships can be challenging; it's something that has to be a priority, otherwise it is easy for it to slide off the list of things to do. In March 2020, we were just coming out of the "baby haze;" my kid was sleeping through the night, and we were ready to start "living our lives" again. We were ready to be social and have our friends over more often. It felt easier to start taking our kid with us to places. And then COVID became widely known and cases started appearing in the US.
In the time of COVID, it has felt almost impossible to maintain and build relationships. It's true that we have been more cautious than many; due to the health situation of our household, doing our part to stop the spread, and the uncertainty over long term side effects from COVID, we have been extremely cautious in what we will and will not do. Each time we have a victory, such as the widespread availability of vaccines, we see a setback, like the delta and omicron variants, and the delay of vaccines for people under 5. That has definitely enhanced my feeling of isolation. Additionally, managing risk has largely been dumped onto individuals, rather than communities and governments making decisions for the collective good.
In December, I got coffee with one of the members of my Neighborhood Association Committee (if you live in Beaverton and want to find out what's going on in your neighborhood, look yours up!). All of our NAC meetings have been virtual, so it was the first time we had met face to face. It was really nice! We met outside, enjoyed a hot beverage, and chatted for about an hour. We made tentative plans that we should have another get-together, maybe with a few more neighbors and our partners.
And then Omicron took off.
I still feel like I can build a friendship with this person, and I'm happy that we got coffee and made the first move towards getting to know one another. However, after almost two years of COVID and its peaks and valleys, it's hard to not feel discouraged. It sucks to think "oh I should text this person" and then remember our community is breaking its COVID count records. I miss having people over for dinner and board games.I miss easily being able to move through the world without calculating the possible risk each action will have. This has made activism and engaging with the community more challenging as well. Zoom and phone calls are great, but it's not a substitute for sharing a meal and having the richness of communication that exists in real life.
I'm hopeful we may be turning the corner in this pandemic this year. Vaccines for little kids should become available. As more of the world becomes vaccinated, we reduce the risk of future variants. It will probably be difficult to put aside my "COVID vigilance", but I am really looking forward to doing so and (re)building relationships.