Time seemed to be moving from them. Backing off and suspending them. They all had trouble remembering what day it was. They had difficulty remembering what their responsibilities were on any given day, and what lay ahead in the days to come.
In a way they felt abandoned, the children of the pandemic. In a sense they were all children now, waiting for the orders and the guidance of Mama Doctor Papa Governor Grandpa Health Official. Some of them, freed of time’s constraints felt ill at ease. Working from home they had a constant nervous feeling as if they were doing something wrong and would be caught and punished. Others, laid off or “furloughed,” having nowhere to go and nothing to do, had to either face themselves – their families – or both. Or turn away into a screen. Many chose television and internet to fill up time. Many chose alcohol and or drugs to avoid their encounters with time-lossness. Some pretended, probably got through the least scathed, or appeared that way. Pretended days contained the same amount of hours and the hours were experienced as in pre-shut-down. Those with young children could do this rather easily. They put time onto their kids, followed the hours attached to them and assumed—hoped—they hadn’t become lost, only temporarily displaced. A regularity could be seen in the children’s activities. They saw their teacher on screen. They had assignments to complete. Meals, bathing, bedtimes. The parents anchored themselves in this.
Some felt they were in a kind of experiment. That they were Subjects in it. Theories spoken of online along this track were usually subsumed in discussions of control and subjugation. Those new to these ideas found it problematic verbalizing what something inside was prodding them to see. Often, their families and friends would listen and – “Hm” and – “Who knows.” Change the subject.
Time doesn’t just disappear. If it feels gone, it’s been removed. It’s been taken. When something more powerful than you—whether a kidnapper or a World Health Organization—suspends your life, cuts you off from what you do, how you live, leaves you floating in the unknown—have they not stolen your time from you? Plundered part of your life from you? Are you then able to retrieve it, to be made whole again? Is anyone, any Body, held accountable for this theft? What recourse is there for the pilfering of days, months of your life when the forces perpetrating such larceny claim it in the name of collective safety and health?
The children of the pandemic, eight, forty-eight, seventy-eight, couldn’t answer these questions. Could barely form the questions. Everything was necessary. Isolating your mother in a nursing home and keeping you away from her for six, seven months—perfectly reasonable. For her health, for yours. For unnamed others. Letting your father die alone in a hospital with no one who loves him by his side. How it has to be. They know what’s right and they know how to take. The children may not have had all the right words, the perfectly formed questions and arguments but they knew, deep inside they knew what was being taken. They, they – were being taken.
Exactly. You are so right to document the outrageous and criminal theft of the sacredness of our relationships and activities while this is fresh in our minds. I hope and pray that the perpetrators are soon flushed out of their dark holes to receive justice for their arrogance and outright crimes.