For a large percentage of you, this column does not resonate. Maybe you don’t have children. Your children may be over 5 years old and have been vaccinated for months. Maybe your children are among the 75% of children (!!) who apparently already had covid at the end of February, according to the CDC.
For the percentage of you who are still partying like March 2020 i.e. avoiding restaurants and indoor parties, concerts, museums, department stores, Jiffy Lubes, movie theaters , FedEx stores, dentist offices and retirement dinners, and who can count on two hands the number of buildings your child has already visited (my daughter thinks Safeway is Disney World), I know what you want for mother’s day and it’s not a bathrobe.
You’ve wanted it since December 2020, when vaccines became available for people 16 and older. And then since May 2021, when use was extended to teens 12 and older. And then since October 2021, when children aged 5 to 11 could get vaccinated, and then since November 2021, when experts predicted a baby vaccine by the end of the year. And then since February 11, 2022, when another unexpected hiccup delayed things by “two months.”
The FDA now says vaccines for children under 5 could be available as early as June. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha.
What I would love for Mother’s Day is to go back in time to the part of the pandemic where officials were still saying things like, “We’re all in this together.” I would like them to clarify that what they really meant was, “We’re all in this together until most of us have antibodies, in which case parents of infants and toddlers- uninfected babies are alone there. I would like them to look carefully at the double helix of boredom and rage that inhabits parents who still have to ask for leave because there has been an outbreak of covid in the toddler room at daycare and that someone has to take care of the child. Because we are most certainly alone there.
If I read another stat about how working moms have borne the brunt of the pandemic, I’ll open the window and make incoherent pterodactyl noises for nine minutes straight, because there’s a time to read that It’s crap for all the working mothers who don’t feel useful. It’s like America is doing what it does best: recognizing that working moms are often put in impossible places, then pretending we can make up for it by giving them a vacation where they eat a pancake in bed. .
I don’t want commiseration, I want a shot. Right in my daughter’s big little thigh. Jabby-jab.
The past two years have been difficult for all families. But I’d bet — myopically, perhaps — they’ve been particularly disorienting for families of children whose entire lives, from birth to present, have been encompassed by the pandemic. There is no “before” to return to. There are no lasting memories of what it might have been like to be a parent in a time without covid. I gave birth to my daughter wearing an N95 mask and gave birth to this fragile and gentle human in an incredibly beautiful world she hasn’t seen enough of. I’ll show her everything, as soon as I can lift her gently in my arms, hold her tight, then pin her down on an exam table so that a nurse can grab hold of her with a needle.
For Mother’s Day, I have [expletive] wants one [expletive] [expletive] vaccine for my [expletive] child. It’s the only thing I want. Also a bottle of good dry shampoo.
