By Richard Reiss
It’s 2 a.m. and I’m writing. I’ve decided that if the world is going to hell in a handbasket that I better hurry up and finish the novel I started a year ago. My wife is in the other room sleeping. I hear her breathing. Her breath is constant and strong like her. She’s had a rough year. Every time, we think it can’t get worse, it does. Hello COVID-19.
Above me, in his bedroom, I hear number two son walking around. I’m not sure what he’s doing, although I’m certain it’s Internet and social media related. Why he’s compelled to walk around is unclear.
The three of us are staying at our home in upstate New York, a beautiful mountain retreat on 5 acres where someday my wife and I will retire. We are 140 miles north of New York City and the COVID-19 epicenter. We are 200 miles north of sons number one and three, currently staying at our home in central New Jersey.
Son number one is dating a nurse. Son number three is dating a teacher. My son and the teacher initially decided to physically not be with each other until the crisis passed. Not being with each other was not a euphemism for no sex. They were really not going to see each other except for Skype, or Zoom, or FaceTime. Technology seemed to be their answer, but love eventually won out and they have since been on a few walks together.
My son and the nurse were slower to make that decision. He wanted him to stay with her at her home. When the virus began and things were shutting down, she had been on vacation, unexposed to patients at the hospital where she worked. The day she went back to work, I sent my son a text message:
“I’ve been thinking about you a lot and how much you enjoy being together. And I’m sure you recognize how dangerous and contagious this virus is. Once she goes back to work, she is going to be exposed. That’s just her job and it’s very brave of her to accept it. I know the two of you want to be together. I understand that. But if you live together after she returns to work, then you must stay with her until this virus passes. You can’t come home. It’s that simple. Sorry. I know you understand. I love you. Be smart. Be safe.”
Such is love in the age of COVID-19.
For weeks, like son number three and the teacher, they stayed apart. Now, following the same pattern, they take socially distant walks through quiet suburban neighborhoods. Both couples want to be intimate with each other. Both couples know that"s not wise.
Yet for those of us who have been in love for a very long time, who, as far as we know, have limited our exposure to the virus, but not to each other, what options do we have? We are isolated, of course. But we open our mail, we accept deliveries, we fill our cars with gas, we buy and eat food, we touch each other, maybe even more than before, because we only have each other to touch. So when my wife reaches for my hand, or places her lips to my cheek, or pushes away a piece of lint that has blown into my hair, I am grateful for her tenderness but mindful I have not hugged my children in more than a month or met a friend with a handshake or a pat on the back. In the new reality, all we have is each other.
My late mother would say, this too shall pass, and she would be correct. But will we go from hugging and handshakes to touching elbows and bowing? We should never grow comfortable with the distance that COVID-19 has forced upon us.
When it’s over, when we reflect on all that we lost and perhaps even gained, I hope that we’ll recognize how important it is to be with each other, not on a screen, but in the same room breathing the same air, sharing the same emotions that sometimes pull us apart but more often hold us together in a kind and loving embrace.
Richard Reiss lives in East Brunswick and is the author of “Desperate Love: A Father’s Memoir.”
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