![]() ![]() Kennedy, the fiery disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger, or 9/11. ![]() The pandemic has not been a single, traumatic “flashbulb” event like the assassination of John F. For the rest of my life, would my story begin with the cancellation of two Delta tickets for Flight 1355, ATL-DEN, scheduled for March 12, 2020? Would my husband eternally narrate the fact that, on March 11, 2020, the National Basketball Association suspended the 2019–20 season after Rudy Gobert, Utah Jazz center, tested positive for the coronavirus? And-bigger picture-what would we as a nation remember? In the weeks that followed, as friends and neighbors recounted similar stories of when normal life stopped for them, I began to wonder about the tales we would someday tell of the pandemic. Oh, my husband thought, this must be serious! At that moment, his plague year began. But that same night the NBA suspended its season. My husband, meanwhile, said that everyone was overreacting, even our son who works at the CDC. ![]() Upstairs, weeping, I unpacked the picture books and little wooden toys. Several of our adult kids had attempted to pierce my denial, calling and texting to say, “Mom, it doesn’t feel safe.” Wednesday night, when I saw the Denver family ringing me via FaceTime, my heart dropped. For the first half of the week, I’d tried to configure the increasingly ominous COVID-19 news in ways that wouldn’t keep me separated from that curly-haired 3-year-old boy. ![]()
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