“Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays …”
My wife and I were really looking forward to this Christmas. It’s a rare year for us with both of our Foreign Service children in the D.C. area at the same time. Our son Virgile and his wife are in the middle of three years in the States, and our daughter Pauline and her family are there for one year of language training before beginning three years in Tunisia late next summer.
It has been a difficult year, thanks at least in part to the pandemic. Pauline was stuck in Guatemala for half the summer because of travel restrictions, while Virgile and Sterling have been working from home since March. Our six grandchildren are home-schooling because of the virus.
We’ve had other non-pandemic health problems. My mother died last month after a long illness, and my brother-in-law died last spring after a long battle with cancer.
The picture above is from the first Christmas after Nicole and I got married. Pauline is 12 and Virgile 7 in this picture. Everybody looks so young, and as I recall this was the second to last Christmas we celebrated together in the house where I grew up.
If we had been able to visit Pauline and her brood, and if Virgile and Sterling had been able to come over for a picture, there would have been 12 of us. The interesting comparison for me is that the nine people in this picture range in age from 66 to 7, while the 12 in our theoretical 2020 picture would range from 71 to 6.
I’m the 71, at least as of tomorrow. The patriarch.
I remember the surprise I felt in the early ’90s when I realized my role (at least in my little nuclear family) had changed. I remembered that I slept well at night as a kid because I knew my dad was there and could handle anything bad that might happen. On this night in the ’90s, I was laying awake in my bed in our beautiful California home and realize that if three other people — Nicole, Pauline and Virgile — were sleeping peacefully it was at least in part because they knew I was there and they believed I could handle anything bad that might happen.
It would have been nice to go north for Christmas, and indeed we had been planning for much of the year that we would go. But about two months ago, I had to face some hard truths. Of the three possible ways we could travel — ruling out the Big Grey Dog — none of them were really safe. The only way I was willing to consider was to drive, and to do the 675-mile trip in one day. Still, a visit would cause all sorts of logistical problems and would probably have resulted in us wearing masks pretty much all the time.
I called my daughter and told her the better part of valor was for us to stay at home.
I’m still hopeful that things will be under control enough by springtime — at least by April or May — that we can go up and visit while everyone is still there. April would be right around the time my mother will be interred with my dad in Arlington National Cemetery, so that would be another good reason to go.
But I’m saddened to see how many people I know and respect are trying to work out ways they won’t have to spend the holidays alone. I would be willing to bet many of they haven’t been tested, and they believe they’re all right because they are asymptomatic and can’t infect others.
If only that were true.
There are many cases nationwide where people have caught the virus from friends or relatives they believed were safe. What’s truly horrible is how much worse Donald Trump made it by refusing to issue a mask mandate and then ridiculing people who did wear masks.
In the end, I believe history will decide that the vast majority of deaths were the result of Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic. It’s difficult to figure how things could have been made any worse than he made them with his lack of action. Even into October, he insisted that wearing a mask or not wearing one was a freedom issue and should be a matter of personal choice.
Just the other day, a maskless man went into a Best Buy store. An employee explained the store’s policy and asked him to wear a mask. He not only refused, he started coughing, sneezing and spitting all over the store. Intentionally.
I’m pretty sure we’ve never had a president who encouraged such bad behavior among his followers.
Through December 9th, more than 290 thousand Americans have died from COVID-19. Indeed, on Dec. 9, 3,055 people died in a 24-hour period, more than died on 9/11. Only two days in history rank higher — the battle of Antietam in 1862 with 3,600 and the Galveston Hurricane in 1900, with between 6,000 and 12,000 deaths.
And it’s getting worse.
When the first news of the pandemic and its comorbidity came out nine months or so ago, I found myself thinking that I knew how I was going to die. All this time later, I’m not sure. I’ve done a pretty good job of distancing from everyone except my wife.
I’m actually starting to believe I might survive, especially now that the end of the Trump Era is in sight.
Maybe it’s worth giving up a Christmas.
Yeah, it is.