Graduating from college during a pandemic was anticlimactic in many ways. Instead of the big family party we had planned, my parents and I ordered takeout to celebrate the night after my senior thesis presentation, which I delivered on Zoom from my childhood bedroom.

It is not that living through a pandemic was prompting an existential crisis. I simply felt a profound need for something new in my life. I needed to feel free again.

– Tracy Rączek (she/her)

“A tear in cloth can be too large for a patch” says the Pashtun proverb. 

Recalling his UN fieldwork in a country where peace and economic prosperity seemed impossible, my colleague’s fingers turned stiff to gouge a pretend hole in his pants. Failing to stitch it, he slouched, wearied by his pretend loss and too real recollections. “See? The damage is far beyond repair.” My heart hurt for the country. As I walked away, I also selfishly wondered how many ruptures in my life had I made that were too deep to mend. 

I do damage. I do damage because I am stubborn. My stubbornness leaves me with broken bones, abandoned relationships, and lost jobs. Yes, I am the kind of stubborn that has carried an injured man down a mountainside and fought bosses that sexually harass. But I also struggle to genuinely apologize, even when I know I am wrong – even to those with whom I am closest and love the most. So when she called last April – that precious old friend whom I had faulted and not spoken to 20 years since – Covid was the perfect scapegoat to remain silent. 

At the start of this pandemic, we were pounded in NYC. TV and radio ceaselessly poured reports of the rampaging disease and skyrocketing deaths into our apartments that we paced within. Temporary morgues stacked up in alleys and parks around us. Family, acquaintances, and colleagues fell ill; some died without warning. We consoled each other across the ethernet; across the airshaft of our tenement building. Boarded streets fell eerily quiet except for sirens that screamed by our windows, then echoed down the city’s canyons. 

I stopped listening to the news, picking up calls. Stopped listening to anyone. I was never good at listening to others anyway. In March I was walloped by chest pains and a positive Covid diagnosis; trapped inside a baton-beaten one-tonne body, I was forced to fight for my breath – a fight I nearly lost and try my hardest to forget. 

“Just calling to check you are OK in NYC — with the virus and all,” a slight strain in her gentle voice. She was “that friend” in your twenties, when you are joyous and foolish; bold and broke. She was sweet. I was wild. In our tribe of musicians, ski-bums and vagabonds, she and I were inseparable for years and made a point to weave our days and lives together — steeped like tea. I can’t recall which joke was hers or mine, only memories of howling together hiking under a full moon in the mountains; searching for a water-hole in the desert; living in adjacent rustic cabins by mossy woods in Alaska. It was there, in Alaska, that our friendship fell apart. In an art gallery, over a glass cabinet full of Russian stacking dolls, during a fight of my making, I ended our friendship. 

For the next 10 years or so, we did not speak. Eventually written words, on holiday cards, were slipped under the wall that I had built between us. Hers were always colorful, with hand drawings of Alaskan wildflowers, tales of huckleberry picking, well-planned river trips, pictures of her children. Mine dripped with political sarcasm and adventures that too often ended in bike crashes or nearly sunken boats. Both tinged with a hint of longing. 

Now she was on my phone. I pressed “voicemail”, like an obsessed lover, and listened to her message three times. “Just calling to check you are OK in NYC — with the virus and all…” By this time, in April, I had escaped from the city to my tiny off-the-grid Catskills cabin. Heated by a woodstove, without electricity or running water, and tucked into 45 acres of woods, I am ever grateful for it. Now it would allow me to walk without a mask and to rest – or more accurately collapse – whenever I needed. I did not have energy to call her back, reopen a deep wound and try to repair it. But something happens when you vomit on the ground, your mind spirals outward and you stay up all night fighting to breathe like you are drowning and you are not sure you will make it till dawn. Then you do – but you don’t know if and when it will happen again. You care more deeply about each small thing afterwards. Everything, achingly, matters. And, oddly, nothing does. Risk and vulnerability and values change proportion. 

She picked up. 

Sitting in my cabin, in the only spot with a mobile signal, staring out the window to the hill of trees, yellow-green with spring buds, focusing on my breath as we talked — something I must do more now — I let it out: “I am so very sorry for what happened back then in Alaska. I can be so stubborn. I am sorry.” Ever kind, she listed traits that she would trade-in for better ones. We chalked it all up to youthful stupidity and arrogance then dove appreciatively into each other’s insights of the world today. We mourned time together lost and belly-laughed over memories shared, trying to pry apart who said this and who did that so long ago — an impossible task. “Perhaps” she noted, “amid all the space of Alaska, maybe we were free to become more of ourselves and less of each other?” 

Finally, after more than two hours passed, we rested on plans to meet as soon and as frequently as our lives allowed, once I am strong enough, and once we all feel safe enough to travel. Reluctant to hang up, reality pressed. Her pre-teen daughter was painting their Anchorage kitchen gold, unwatched and without a drop-cloth. Our Catskill cabin was getting dark and cold — the woodstove fire and lamps needed tending. 

There is, of course, a very real chance we will not meet again. But she is kind and I am stubborn so I will mend best I can.

Her hair, mostly a deep silver with streaks of peppercorn black, is pinned up with a blue rhinestone hair clip. My grandma glides out of the nursing home with a wicker basket and iPad in tow. I have come to expect this type of anachronism from her. Born in 1929, the year the stock market crashed at the beginning of the Great Depression, she was raised on a Mennonite farm in Iowa. The fifth of seven children, my Grammy Ida often told me, “that meant in the winters, I’d be on the outside of the bed and in the summers, on the inside.” She is ninety-one now, a far cry from the young, bold woman who drove a yellow VW bug around Europe after college. And yet, her spunk hasn’t diminished. On this day, in 2020, I have come to “jail break” her from the nursing home in Portland. 

As I waited for her (mask on) outside the doors of the nursing home my mind traveled back over the last twenty-six years of memories. My Grammy Ida has always been my best friend. We bonded at a young age over a mutual love of toasted bread slathered in butter; “the butter gals” our extended family would call us. How could I forget the time, many years later, when she taught me to butterfly and stuff a guinea fowl with olive tapenade (the perfect first date meal, she claimed). I could never understand the logic of crushing the bones of a tiny, dead bird as a good first impression, but she insisted. When I moved away to North Carolina, I worried about her. My other grandparents died while I was away and Grammy Ida got older and older. 

Four years ago I moved back to Washington which didn’t please her, “why not Portland?” she’d always ask me. But it was close enough to take the bus on weekends to visit. We had become regulars at the Great Clips, the Costco, and the local pizza parlor. Then a year ago “it” happened. At ten am I had boarded a bus back to Seattle and at six pm I got the call from my Aunt, “Grammy Ida is having a stroke.” For weeks she couldn’t sit up and her words were a jumble of misnomers and misspeaks. I worried. I visited. I waited. My Grammy Ida was the first in her family to go to college. She raised four children as a single parent while working as a substitute teacher and tax accountant. She nurtured the family pets: a monkey, two parrots, countless dauchunds, a duck, and a one eyed tomcat named Sugar. She was tough as nails. 

Now, a year later as I watch her walk out of the nursing home, I consider it to be a small miracle, but not an unexpected one. I greet her with a hug (which admittedly, may not be COVID-smart) and guide her into the passenger seat of the car. “Hey Grammy,” I say, loudly so her hearing aids can pick up the words. For the past few months, she’s been confined to her small room which is wise from a health standpoint but painful to a ninety-one year-old whose greatest joy in life is visitors. But today, on her birthday, I’m here to take her back to the house she lived in for fifty-three years in Portland for banana cake (her favorite) and steaks. 

There is so much pain and uncertainty in the world today. Grammy Ida as lived through her fair share of pain and uncertainty: the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, and now, COVID. On a bad day recently she asked me, “is Germany still in two parts or one?” “It’s one Grammy” I told her, “and has been for a few years now.” She paused and thought for a moment, “that’s good to hear,” she told me “that’s good to hear…” I told my Aunt about this encounter later in the day and we both laughed. But my sister had a different reaction. “Katie,” she said to me “can you imagine how much has changed in Grammy’s lifetime?” she reminded me and as usual, she is right. COVID-19 will make it into the history books, that is for sure. And I imagine that historians will have much to say about its impact. 

My Grammy Ida will not make the history books, but she should. These last few months I’ve temporary moved to Oregon where I can go visit her frequently and bring her homemade carrot cake and large oranges from the grocery store (which are always her favorite gift). Her life has not been easy, but it has long and full of many memories. A few years ago, on one visit to Portland, I drove us to a local donut shop. We pulled up in her old silver Toyota in our matching red sweatshirts and Adidas sneakers (to the amusement of everyone inside). I got a yeast glazed donut and she got a chocolate one. We drove to a small park by her house and ate the donuts on a bench by a pond with ducks drifting across the water. I don’t know how many years or months or days my Grammy Ida has left, but I will cram in as many memories as I can. And in a funny way, thanks to COVID, I already have. As I drive Grammy Ida back to the nursing home after her birthday party I give her a kiss on the top of her head and say, “bye best friend, I love you.” “Love you more,” she replies. “Not possible,” I retort.

– Kathryn Reale (she/her)

It is currently 5 am. I have been up since 4, plagued by the information I now carry with resounding devastation and anxiety. What I had anticipated over the last 10 days has unfortunately been reassured with a simple byline of a test result: I am positive for COVID-19. 

Over the last several years, being sick has been part of my daily life. When you spent as much time on airplanes as I did, it really came with the territory, and I knew the associated risk. In 2019, it was necessary to keep my job, my relationship & my sanity, logging more than 60,000 miles in 8 months. Spending that kind of time in public places, sharing the same air with so many different people, it was a small price to pay to live. From all the respiratory infections, touches of flu, colds, & sinus infections in the last seven years…nothing has felt more sobering than this diagnosis. 

Now – I will be the first person to admit when I am in the wrong. Or better yet, being dramatic. And to put you at ease, I am not dying. Although not being able to taste my food or hug my boyfriend or see my family makes me certainly feel down. The more significant reason I am sharing this with you today is that I was wrong. About everything. When our country went into lockdown in March of this year, I honestly felt one emotion, which was disappointment. Disappointed for all the missed social gatherings, the weddings that were no longer happening. My boyfriend and I met at a wedding after all, and I have always loved being in large groups celebrating with others. The social butterflies of the world can empathize with me; it was a challenging few months. However, I knew people were dying, but there was honestly so much information out there with a division so strong, it was virtually impossible to keep straight. Watch the news, don’t watch the news, COVID isn’t real, I’m anti-mask, please wear your mask, I have a condition that prevents me from wearing a mask, I could go on for days. 

So with this information, I opted to continue living my life when the world opened up. Dinners with friends, boat gatherings for birthdays, bridal showers, road trips through National Parks; you name it, I did it. I am a healthy 28-year-old. As long as I wash my hands and conduct proper hygiene regimes, I will be okay. I was wrong. 

I was met with a brutal confrontation with reality when a friend of mine found out that her parents had tested positive for COVID-19. She had seen them on Monday, had been with them for most of that week, returned home on Saturday, and had driven down to see my boyfriend and me on Sunday. She tested positive the next Tuesday. I know this by heart because you have to know. These questions were the primary subject the doctor implored me on a zoom call that day. After I had naturally wiped the tears enough to connect with a physician. He carefully explained that I had to wait and quarantine for at least 7 days before I tested for COVID if I did not start to show symptoms. “Symptoms can show up as late as a week to 14 days after exposure,” he said thoughtfully, “I suggest you rest up and distance yourself from others until at least Sunday.” I was so careful, I thought. I was healthy, I made sure to use hand sanitizer. I was wrong. 

I immediately called my boyfriend in a panic, unsure what to do as he was at his job where he worked in a lab with others, “exposing even more innocent people,” I thought. He assured me that we would get through this and promptly came home 20 minutes later, supportively sitting by my side as I rapidly googled scientific research on the virus. And the next three days went by, feeling a whirlwind of anxiety, stress, grief, anger, and restlessness to find out if the inevitable had, in fact, occurred. Until I started feeling a soreness in my throat 5 days into our quarantine. We received nose swabs on day 6, “am I starting to feel congested?” I said to myself that afternoon. On day 7, I woke up to my boyfriend making me breakfast. Little did I know it would be the last meal I could taste for a while. Day 8 brought the fatigue and headaches, and on day 9, shortness of breath when walking up a flight of stairs. I was wrong about everything. 

What you do today matters. What you do today impacts everyone around you. From the kind older grocery store attendant who takes your credit card to the person you fall asleep to and wake up with every morning, your actions impact everyone around you. The world has been the most divided I have ever seen, and there are so many facets to that statement. But the greatest one for me is that we are selfish. I was selfish. I put my necessity to be around people before the health of the people around me. And for that, I am incredibly sorry. There is no one to blame here but myself. And at the end of the day, people are and will continue to succumb to this virus. 

What I will leave you with is a salient but straightforward reminder to put others before ourselves. Kindness is exceptional and rare, and this virus has given us a unique opportunity to show someone that they are appreciated for staying home. For wearing a mask. For educating yourself. For displaying to the world that you care about the people around you. Somewhere in 2020, this sentiment has gotten lost. I am here to tell you it is very real. I am here to tell you that I was wrong about everything.

Be well,
Kathryn