What's more crushing than COVID-19? Illustration Copyright © 2020 by Aeryn Sandiford.
“How does a culture withstand the onslaught of a pandemic? We survive first of all with the presence of culture within us. It is to our inner culture that we turn, the culture we carry in us through years of unconscious osmosis and conscious acquisition.” Ben Okri
MY 13-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER is afraid to die. Some days, it’s an abstract fear: the thought of not being here, of being nothing, is an unfathomable void. There are days—today—it is COVID-19.
“What if I catch it?” she asks.
“No one wants to catch it,” I say.
It doesn’t matter she’s less likely to die from it than, hey, those over fifty like me, or those with pre-existing health conditions. “Fear accompanies the possibility of death,” to quote from one of my favourite sci-fi shows, FarScape. “Calm shepherds its certainty.”
Calm. How to get back to there from here, and stay?
As of this evening, in less than a week, fourteen people in Barbados have tested positive for COVID-19. Prime Minister Mia Mottley has said we can expect several more with increased testing.
When the world is too much with us, and we’ve played Uno for as long as we can and watched too much Game Show Network with Steve Harvey family feuding, “Go read,” I tell Aeryn.
She picks her copy of Harriet’s Daughter by Marlene NourbeSe Philip from the kitchen table, heads for the living room couch.
The YA novel is the latest title on her list to read. Not the school's; the system has yet to catch up with what’s on offer to Caribbean students. The book seems to settle her. The world slows down just a microsecond or three while she quietly turns pages.
My mind has often gone back these last few days to when I was her age and the US and USSR seemed poised to trigger World War Three.
“There was this movie,” I tell her, sitting beside her. “The Day After. It captured our fears of nuclear cataclysm perfectly for the time.” She’s far too young to know about Jason Robards, who played the lead, so I explain.
Besides reading, we tell stories. Or look at old photos of her mother and us together when the house was less cluttered, the paint fresher—more stories. Or read to each other from our cellphones. Much of that online literature is related to COVID-19, but not all. We talk to each other.
Is there any other remedy to our present situation? All this talking—sharing—of fears and doubts, of hopes and dreams for a time after this.
“Now when am I going to wear my Nike VaporMax?” Her words are a teen’s lament. We’re leaving the house for what will be her last day of school.
I don’t know what to answer. The shoes were to debut at BSSAC. Our Minister of Health and Wellness cancelled the last two days of the annual secondary school sporting showcase, and all such gatherings of over a hundred people.
“Another event,” I suggest.
“But that won’t be for a long time.”
I stop to consider. That’s possibly true.
“But there will be another event, at some point.” She can’t deny that either.
The thought may not entirely comfort, but it reminds us to care. It should remind us to hope. For something just beyond our reach that’s normal, for the next day.
And for the one after the next.
Last modified April 18, 2020.
