The Things About Jaynie Lamar….

A short story.

*The characters in this story are fictional. Any likeness to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The first thing that I noticed about Jaynie Lamar was her awkward smile. Initially, I couldn’t tell if she was simply uncomfortable in her own skin or a painfully fake person. The truth, it turned out, was someplace in the middle.

The first time we met, late September of our freshman year, I was perched on the brick wall surrounding Massell Pond. I was pretending to study, occasionally tossing tidbits of bread to the ducks, contemplating some meaningless party, unremarkable interaction from the evening before, or random boy (truth be told, after meeting my husband, every other boy became random, but I digress). Whatever the reason, I was lost in my thoughts, unwinding from the constant drain of constantly being surrounded by new people.

The second thing that I noticed about Jaynie Lamar was that she had an issue with boundaries. She plowed through situations like a mac truck. She either couldn’t take a hint or chose not to take a hint.

Jaynie sat down next to me and started asking questions. “We’re in the same Freshman Seminar. Are you studying for the midterm?” I stared at her, startled and confused. Absent-mindedly. “Oh, yeah. This is just a ruse. I’m trying to clear my head.”

Jaynie smiled, awkwardly, trying to decide what to say next. “I’m Jaynie. I live in Deroy. I think we officially met last night. You were on Moody Street, right? Which building are you in?” Acknowledging that she was putting herself out there, trying to meet someone new, I nodded, said my name, half-smiled, and pointed to a dilapidated building on the other side of the quad. “Oh, do you live on Deena’s floor?” Without waiting for my response, she vomited that she went to the same high school as Deena, talking about her high school boyfriend with whom she was “still trying to make things work long distance.” I continued to offer a half smile.

On some level, I appreciated the distraction as it made me feel less guilty about not studying. But as she continued on, I lost focus. Two minutes later, I couldn’t have identified the salient points – if there were any – of our conversation. Yet, Jaynie assumed my half-smile demonstrated interest. “I have to get to the library,” she said as if I was keeping her there. “Let’s get dinner tomorrow night after Freshman Seminar,” she didn’t ask, she stated, as she got up and walked away.

The third thing that I noticed about Jaynie Lamar was that she was shaped like an upside-down egg. While this seems like an unkind observation, it was not meant as a judgment or a slam. Rather it was in response to the story she told me the next evening over dinner.

“Do you like your roommate?” she asked me. “She’s fine as a roommate,” I lied. In fact, I disliked my roommate. She was quite judgmental about trivialities, things that were none of her business, like the way you danced, or the people whom you considered befriending, or the subjects you wanted to study…the list goes on (and this comes from someone who is admittedly judgmental and was always super self-aware of her tendency to judge). Yet, the thing I disliked most about her was that her best friend from high school lived upstairs from us, and she turned on her. She was downright unkind, telling her not to come around. But I wasn’t prepared to share this perspective with anyone on campus at this point, saving it all as fodder for my home friends.

“I feel the same way about my roommate,” Jaynie said this as if I was suddenly her soulmate, once again flashing me that pained smile. “She’s fine, but I never would have chosen her on my own.” She went into extreme detail when describing her roommate, suggesting that she was her physical and intellectual opposite, a tall young woman, a “Masshole” with dark, frizzy hair, jet black eyes, and an athletic build who wanted to study economics. She used the word “intense.” Jaynie, short, blond, blue-eyed, and, as I noticed at that moment, egg-shaped, wanted to major in romance languages and travel the world. She hoped her life would be one great adventure.

I liked that about Jaynie. She was open and adventurous, not guarded and cautious like me. She led scavenger hunt teams and planned Scorpion Bowling nights in Cambridge, encouraging evenings of laughter.

But my antenna shot up after noticing a fifth thing about Jaynie Lamar. It was something that I started to see more regularly about six months after we first met, as Jaynie was not only unaware of boundaries, she was inconsiderate of them. And this is when Jaynie, the egg-shaped, awkwardly smiling young woman from Deroy, became quite intrusive.

She became a rotten egg.

Within a week, Jaynie befriended a boy I considered dating and started dating one of my male friends. When I suggested that she was making me uncomfortable, she flashed that awkward smile. “We’re just attracted to the same people in different ways,” she told me. I was utterly speechless, unable to find an appropriate retort.

She crossed this line several times with several people whom she tagged as friends, which led to the mass exodus from the Jaynie Lamar Fan Club. Sure, we all enjoyed the Scorpion Bowling nights, but when she notoriously hinted that she knew things about all of us that we didn’t know about ourselves, we started to step away. And, as she played the sympathetic ear on both sides, quietly reveling in the intimate knowledge that gave her a sense of power and the control over her friends’ lives, more people retreated.

Months later, many of her friends would lament that she knew when their relationships were on the rocks before they did. A few people stuck around, unable to decide whether to run in the other direction or stand firm to guard the relationships that she was uncomfortably infiltrating.

At the time, I certainly wasn’t secure enough in myself, my new dynamic, or the new people with whom I was building relationships to wait around for her to hijack these relationships. I went back to my spot by the pond, relieved that I only shared my secrets with my friends from home, and decided to silently distance myself from the scorpion bowls and scavenger hunts, immersing myself in adventures with other people.

The final thing I noticed about Jaynie Lamar was that she was anxious to escape the confines of our college campus. She had done her damage, and she was anxious to spread her wings. The last time I saw her she was packing up her car and preparing for her year abroad in France. Disinterested and disgusted, I could barely muster a half smile for her.

Then I forgot about her; I forgot all of the things about Jaynie Lamar. She was a blip on my college screen, easily erased from the far recesses of my mind. Until about three years later. As I wandered the New York City streets, hopping from bar to bar with friends from college, I ran into one of Jaynie Lamar’s former boyfriends. After laughing and reminiscing at MacLeer’s for hours, we struck up a friendship during which I, only somewhat unintentionally, learned as much about Jaynie Lamar as she must have known about me when she crossed the boundaries I tried so hard to establish with her.

While a rotten egg might retain its oval shape, many other things in life come full circle.

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Who Are You? Three Decades After the “Final” Tour….

The Who is going on tour this spring.

When I heard this on the radio the other day, three things came to mind. First, it would be so much fun to see The Who in concert one more time. Second, 77-year-old Roger Daltrey has way more energy than me. Third, I remembered that the last time that I saw The Who in concert, I was younger than my second child, and Roger Daltrey was not significantly older than I am today. Again, I find his energy level impressive.

My memories of my first Who concert are somewhat blurry, probably a bit rose-colored. I remember the feeling more than the details, as I was completely unencumbered by the blessings and stresses of adulting. And while being post-teen but pre-adult was a carefree time, the world was also a different place. Maybe I was just naive, but this was pre-first war in Iraq, pre-wave of terrorist attacks on America, both international and domestic, and we weren’t hearing about gun violence in schools, in malls, in our lives every day. We didn’t have to maneuver to stay safe, and I was always ready to take on any adventure offered to me.

It was the summer after my freshman year of college. The sunroof was open, and the music blasting from the FM radio and our mouths, as my high school friend and I essentially sang our way to Worcester, Massachusetts, two hours away from our homes.

We went up to Massachusetts early that morning, to spend the day at a lake with a few of my college friends. I remember baking in the sun, unsuccessfully attempting to waterski, and grabbing sandwiches at a local deli on our way to the concert. By the time we arrived at the arena, we had a full day of experiences behind us.

But we were energized. I can’t remember the opening act or the song that The Who sang as they took the stage. Yet, I vividly recall screaming over the music in the arena as we made our way from our seats in the stands to the concert floor. We claimed that we were looking for our brother. We claimed that we didn’t speak fluent English. We laughed a lot. And we ended up right in front of the stage, screaming, dancing, and laughing all night.  

The journey was as much fun as the destination.

Now, I’m excited to arrive at my destination safely.

I like the idea of going to see The Who live in concert one more time. If they can muster up the strength to go on tour at their ages, I should be able to show up at my age. Maybe if COVID subsides and people must wear masks, I’ll consider going. But I hope that it wouldn’t be too loud, as that might give me a headache. I doubt I’d have the energy to scam my way down to the concert floor. Maybe, I could get comfortable seats someplace in the middle of the arena and quietly enjoy the music. Maybe, given their collective ages, they would want to put on a daytime concert so we, I mean they, could arrive home before it gets too late.

I’ll admit that as much as I like the idea of going to see The Who live in concert one more time, I’m more likely to stream the concert from the comfort of my couch instead.

I remember thinking that we were seeing The Who’s final concert tour all those years ago. Now I realize that it might have been my one and only live stop on The Who’s tour, while they still, admirably, continue to entertain three decades later.

Never Should We Ever…Again….

A long-time friend of mine recently celebrated a milestone birthday. Many of her friends flooded her Facebook page and group texts with well wishes, reminiscing about birthdays long gone, recalling how we celebrated her birthdays past, all of the decadent, carefree fun in which we once engaged. As I perused these memories, all of which gave me reasons to smile, I realized that I would never again engage in several of these activities.

Now, of course, many of these activities fall under the “I’m too old for this stuff” category. But, regardless of our decrepit state, and as a long-term germaphobe, the current pandemic has put a damper on a wide variety of activities for me and other revelers of any age.

So, I have created my pandemic “never should we ever again” list. A list of activities that we might consider living without….

Blowing out birthday candles. This is something that even the oldest and least adventurous of us never hesitated to do before Covid-19. We never considered that people were spitting on, spreading germs all over, the cake that we were about to eat. We never feared the particles. Now, the person blowing out the candles could be Typhoid Mary. The simple tradition is just not worth the risk.

Ball Pits and Sandboxes. Imagine jumping into a pit of balls filled with snot, saliva, and various other excrements. Or sitting in a box of sand that has been the home to animals, bugs, and diaper leaks. The original home of stomach and coxsackie viruses impose a greater threat with the emergence of Covid-19. Luckily all of my children (and I) have aged out of this germ-infested activity, but I can’t imagine that people won’t think twice about jumping in after contending with the pandemic.

Beer bongs. Remember going to a party and drinking from a beer bong? This is most definitely a pandemically unacceptable activity. I no longer want to share a beer, little yet have beer funneled into my mouth using a contraption from which a stranger just drank. A contraption that was probably never cleaned. Ever.

Buffets. Another once-non-threatening activity in which I will no longer partake is buffet-style meals. Walking about a room, picking at food items that total strangers picked at seconds before I arrived. What if they sneezed on the food? Or wiped their nose or mouth on their hands before handling the serving utensils? And what if they touched more than one utensil when they went to pick their plates, forks, and knives. It makes all of the pretty tables of food look completely unappealing and inedible.

Scorpion bowling. Way back in the 1990’s, when I attended college right outside of Boston, my friends and I used to go to a great Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square. Our favorite item on the menu, the only item that we actually remember, were the scorpion bowls, large, tasty bowls of an alcoholic punch that were placed in the middle of each table. Yet, we didn’t pour the punch into individual glasses. We each stuck a straw in the bowl and started sipping, providing a meal filled with entertainment and pre-Instagram pictures for our nothing books and photo albums. Over the decades, friends have mentioned returning to that fateful restaurant to “go bowling.” Now, I think I’ll have to pass.

If Delta can be demolished, and if the pandemic ever truly ends, we can all return to the activities many of us have put on pause. While I can’t wait to celebrate friends again, I think we should all consider skipping the buffet and the scorpion bowl.

Missing People

Growing up, I always felt as if people were missing.

My grandparents’ Mill Basin cape cod was always noisy, filled with ongoing card games, opening and closing doors, inappropriate jokes, tears, laughter, and screams. Neighbors, business associates, friends, and distant relatives would pop in on a regular basis, invited in by the traveling aromas of cakes and soups and sweet and sour chicken meatballs which permeated the house. It was not a quiet or lonely place, and every passerby was welcome.

Yet, I always felt as if people were missing.

Maybe they felt it too.

Maybe I was yearning to know the people who were never able to be there; the great grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who had been shot in the back and thrown in a hole or gassed until they could no longer breathe, dying without a shred of dignity on top of hundreds of other bodies.

Maybe it was that, other than my brother, there were no other children my age in our family. My father’s only sister, my parents’ only close sibling, was a wonderfully eccentric former ballet dancer turned chain smoker and professor who moved to England and had not yet met her perfect mate. The first cousins thing was not happening.

Suffice to say, while my brother and I were doted on by all of the adults in our lives, I went through my childhood feeling that there was an undefinable void.

As I got older, I filled that void with friends and activities and jobs. I filled that void with the noise that permeated my grandparents’ house. I was, for a time, less aware that anyone was missing, as I didn’t have time to notice.

When I started my family, with each child, the void seemed a little less apparent. The emptiness was slowly dissipating. With the birth of my fourth child, for the first time in my life, I felt as if no one else was missing. This child, a child who looks nothing like me or my side of the family, has a strange familiarity about him Something innate. Something intangible. Something that made me feel as if no one was missing any longer.

For a while, I felt at peace. I felt pure joy.

Until my father died.

Once again, I woke up every morning feeling as if someone was missing. Yet, this time, that person was not a concept. I knew exactly whom I was missing. Every day, I miss his voice, his smile, his irreverent sense of humor, his laugh, his brilliance, and his kindness. It is a feeling that I cannot shake.

That complete sense of inner peace, that joy, that I felt after the birth of my fourth child, was gone again.

As I continue to try to accept this loss, I will take a page out of my grandparents’ book. I will fill my home with noise. I will fill my home with card games and laughter and screaming and the smells of cakes and soups. I will embrace all that I have, still knowing that I am missing people.

A Legendary Memory

At times, when I see a name or a picture, a memory vividly pops into my head. I can recall what it felt like to be somewhere, I can hear myself having a conversation with a person that took place decades earlier. It is more than a memory and less than a vision.

A few weeks ago, as a familiar name popped up on the television, informing me that someone with whom I had a fleeting, rather trivial encounter was gone. The memory of that brief moment, standing on the stage beside this legend, came rushing back into my conscious. 

My father was a handball and racquetball champion. Growing up in Brooklyn, these were the low cost, low stake games he played after school, on weekends, and eventually after work. They were street games, pick-up games he played regularly with friends from his neighborhood. He claimed that playing kept his mind focused and helped him to stay physically fit. I think he appreciated the physics and math involved in the game’s strategy.

Throughout my life, he regularly participated in game after game, tournament after tournament. He played ball all over the tri-state area, near our home in Poughkeepsie, at West Point Military Academy with many decorated officers, and back in his old Brooklyn neighborhood.

Many of these tournaments took over our weekends when I was young. Despite the hours spent watching my father hit a small ball against a wall or three, I never developed a particular love for handball or racquetball.

I was a die-hard baseball fan. I yearned to be spending my weekends in the South Bronx, in the house that Ruth built, watching Bucky Dent, Thurmon Munson, and Lou Pinella slam one over right field and into the stands. I liked the fanfare, the nationally televised games, the teamwork, and the baseball cards that went along with the game.

My father preferred to be the action rather than watch the action.

Despite my pleas, my whining, my nagging, my childhood weekends were not spent in the Yankee stadium’s stands.

So, I maintained my front seat to infinite handball and racquetball tournaments. My mom referred to us as the “pit crew” for the games. We supplied water, snacks, towels, and a change of clothing. Plus, occasional cheers and moral support, depending on how cranky we were and how much we would have preferred to be doing something else that weekend.

Four times a year, various award ceremonies were held for these tournaments. My father joked that these dinners were his apology to my mother for making her sit through countless hours of handball and racquetball. My mother grudgingly admitted that she enjoyed these ceremonial dinners, as they provided an opportunity to meet new people, and the celebrity guests were entertaining.

I regularly complained that this did not excuse our lack of Yankee’s tickets, as I was not sufficiently entertained by my parents’ stories about the journalists, football players, politicians, and actors who told a funny joke or made a noteworthy gaff.

Still, I received no seats at the stadium.

In the fall of 1978, when a baseball legend was the scheduled keynote speaker for the IBM Country Club awards ceremony, I was offered my mother’s coveted seat at the dinner. It wasn’t an afternoon in the South Bronx, but it did involve baseball. 

The player wasn’t a Yankee, and I was not a Braves or Brewers fan. I had several of his baseball cards in my “not a Yankee” pile. Yet, this player’s contributions to the game were monumental, as he broke Babe Ruth’s homerun record only four years earlier and held the record for the most – 2,297 – runs batted in. My eight-year-old self wanted to know if he secretly dreamed of being a Yankee. Because, who wouldn’t want to be a Yankee?

While I wanted to wear a Yankees cap to the dinner, to show my allegiance to my team, my mother insisted that I wear a flowy purple dress with my hair partially pulled back in a pretty floral barrette. As a compromise, my mother gave me a Yankees sticker to wear, rather than a pin.

I would be the youngest person attending this adult event. Meeting the baseball legend, Mr. Hank Aaron.

I don’t recall much about Mr. Aaron’s speech, other than that he spoke affectionately about his father, who first introduced him to baseball, and the need for athletes to build endurance. My most vivid memory of the soft-spoken baseball legend was shaking his hand as my father took me up to the stage with him to accept his award. I suggested that my father could beat him in a game of racquetball. He chuckled heartily. His laugh echoed through the room as he kindly responded, “Well, young lady, I bet he’d be a solid competitor.”

For years, when I lamented that I never sat in the stadium that Guidry, Dent, and Munson ruled, my parents would remind me of my evening with Mr. Aaron. And my father would repeat the story of my brief conversation with Mr. Aaron. 

When I heard that Mr. Aaron passed away in January, about a year after we lost my father, I suddenly heard Mr. Aaron’s deep laugh and saw his welcoming smile. I could see myself standing on the stage. And I could see my father smiling, proud that I was confident enough to ask a question.

In a perfect universe, if there really is a heaven, Mr. Aaron is playing a pick-up game of racquetball with my father right now.

A Closet Full of Stories

My grandmother had the most incredible collection of size six and a half shoes. While she was no Imelda Marcos, her closet housed at least 80 pairs of shoes. She collected them over the 50 plus years she lived in this country, never discarding a pair, whether they were worn out or out of style. Because, as she often reminded me, there was a time that she didn’t have a single pair of shoes.

She came to this country with nothing. She had no money and could not speak the language. Everything, right down to the shoes on her feet, was stolen by the Nazis. As she and her second husband built a new life, a business, and a home, every pair of shoes that she purchased was proof of her grit, her perseverance, her ability to survive.

Her shoes were lined up on shelves on the left side of her small bedroom closet. Most of them were out of their boxes, there to be seen, to be admired. She had an eye for the most elegant designs, clearly choosing each pair carefully. Her diverse collection included black patten leather kitten heels from the 1950’s, vintage, grass green velvet boudoir heels with a ruffled trim and three-inch black go-go boots from the 1960’s, platform boots, clogs, and wedges from the 1970’s, loafers, ballet slippers, the classic, black Stuart Weitzman pump, and even a few pairs of Manolo Blahnik sling-back sandals. Those are the pairs that I remember.

As a young child, I would sneak into her closet and try on her shoes. I would stare at myself in the mirror, putting my hair in different types of pony tails, making “fancy faces,” imagining myself to be dancing at Studio 54, a guest at a fancy wedding, or on my way to tea at the Russian Tea Room or The Plaza. Simply putting on these shoes, I changed my life, I became glamorous, I became exciting. All my seven-year-old self-wanted was the miniskirt or leather pants to complement the outfits.  

I grew up and, as a solid size seven and a half, grew out of her shoes. While her shoes no longer fit me, I still found myself walking into her closet. My fantasy world, my time machine was long gone, but now each pair of shoes told me a different story. She acquired a few new pairs every year, but the older pairs, the shoes I recalled from my dress up days, still resided there as well.

Each pair of shoes had its own history. I remembered the pair of shoes that she wore to my sweet sixteen, the shoes that she purchased on our trip to Italy, the shoes that she wore to her husband’s funeral. I remembered shopping for shoes with her at Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, where she would let me try on silver shoes donned with plastic gemstones.  

When she died in 2009, her closet filled with shoes remained. Not one pair was out of place. My mother asked me what to do with all of them, as they did not fit on our oversized feet. Should we donate them? But I could not bear to part with them, as they represented her journey and my childhood. Unfortunately, my mother was not the sole executor of my grandmother’s estate. Her half-brother was the co-executor. His second wife, the one to whom my grandmother referred unaffectionately as “Botched Boob Job,” the one who did not show up to my grandmother’s funeral, decided that the shoes would be hers. She would sell any pairs of value and throw away the rest of them. My mother asked that she consider donating the shoes that she didn’t want for herself, but she did not respond to her requests.

My house full of boys will tell you that I have a collection that rivals my grandmother’s closet. I do not. But, in her memory, I try to keep all of my shoes, regardless of their condition. And when I purchase a new pair of shoes, I do so in her memory, hoping that each pair will have a purpose and a story to tell.

I often wonder what happened to those grass green velvet heels and the three-inch black go-go boots. I hope that they are still part of someone’s story, being worn by someone who needs them, or at least sitting on someone’s shelf being admired by an imaginative little girl.   

The Circumstances of a Friendship

Sex breeds.  Causing unsolvable problems.  Creating unexpected, often unwieldy alliances.  And we weren’t the ones having the sex.

We weren’t even flirting.  But, we started dating the Sunday night that my roommate, Fish, did her freshman boyfriend.  Feigning ignorance about the status of the freshman’s relationship with our neighbor, Fish lured him into our room and jumped him.

Despite my over-tired state, I was obviously not welcome in that room.  And, she, our neighbor, could hear the action through the paper-thin walls of our luxurious Brandeis accommodations.  She too had to escape.  So we took a walk.

A good hard drink always makes a first date more palatable.  A few shots of warm Absolut for the underage coeds from the bottle once-stored in Fish’s closet made the conversation flow even faster.

Sitting on the steps to the student center, we told each other our stories.  She meticulously detailed every guy she ever kissed, the way that they kissed, and why she kissed them.  All seven of them.  She relayed the saga of her excruciatingly painful senior prom extravaganza with Pennsylvania Bob.  Mental images of Bob and the disastrous prom would run through my dreams that night.

I, in turn, told her the convoluted stories of my two Jakes.  How we met, how we dated, how we cheated, and how we broke up.  Four years of convoluted love stories sufficiently summarized in half an hour.  For years to come, she’d be asking if I was referring to Jake “A” or “B” as she eventually categorized them.

From that moment on, we had our own inside jokes, a special rapport, and a close friend comfort level that typically took years to develop.  And, as it turns out, we cliqued better than Fish and her cheating boyfriend.  That was their one and only night together.

A Friendship

Do you remember?

The days of whining over wine coolers

About the boys we tossed

And those we lost

Do you remember?

When driving a car was not about getting somewhere

But about being someone

About our freedom

Do you remember?

Laughing at the gym

When we were supposed to be working on our bodies

Rather than our psyches

Do you remember?

When nothing meant everything

And the story of our lives could be found in the lyrics to a song

That could relay all that was right and all that was wrong

Do you remember?

When we were friends….

Regarding Physical Education in The Time of COVID-19

Dear Physical Education Teacher,

I am writing to you today because I received a warning that my child is failing middle school online quarantine gym class. And by failing, I mean that he has an 11 percent in your class. I respectfully acknowledge that my child is not doing his work. No excuses. He has refused to do his gym class assignments.

That said, I want to assure you that while he has absolutely refused to spend another 45 minutes of isolated online learning to complete gym class, he is getting plenty of offline exercise. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, his three older brothers have made sure that they wrestled and boxed with him on a daily basis. Yes, he is sometimes the punching bag, but it doesn’t mean that he isn’t moving around. He has also mastered the art of running about the house with his dirty clothes and throwing them all over the place. I know that it’s not baseball or football, but he has developed quite an arm when he throws his dirty underwear across the room. He is also playing a lot of tug of war as he pulls Xbox and Wii controllers out of his brothers’ hands. Trust me, he is burning calories.

I do not want to diminish the importance of your class. Nor do I want to minimize the challenge of instructing a bunch of 13 year olds in online physical education. But it seems contrary to the general purpose of physical education to fight with your child to spend more time on an app and expect that app to motivate your child to work out.

With all of the challenges associated with online learning, with all of the sacrifices that our teachers and children have had to make, I fully understand the challenge of engaging children in online physical activities. Especially alone. Gym class feeds on camaraderie. There is no camaraderie in quarantine.

As we struggle, daily, to reduce our child’s screen time, I have a hard time stressing the importance of spending additional time online for physical education when he could be…throwing his clothes across a crowded room instead.

In the end, I understand that my child cannot fail middle school online quarantine gym class. It is more about being responsible and fulfilling your commitments than it is about gym class. So, while I understand his frustration with online quarantine gym class, I will make sure that he fulfills his physical education obligations.

Of course, I would greatly appreciate if he could get at least a little bit of credit for his daily wrestling….

Genuine Generosity

Crisis shows a person’s – a country’s – true character. We better learn how people prioritize. We better understand the empirical, internal value systems that motivates all of us.

I live in a generous community. Throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, our community raised well over a hundred thousand dollars to feed first responders. This was not the work of one large donation, but rather impressively, a community that came together, with many people giving a little bit here and there. An incredible accomplishment.

And as these first responders are grateful for the meals, they continue to implore us to stay at home. To consider how your personal actions can impact other people. As this is just as generous as donating to feed first responders.

During a time of crisis, our generosity should personally extend to our everyday actions. World-wide, we must be more cognizant of others’ sensitive predicaments under these crazy, unpredictable circumstances. This virus doesn’t discriminate, but there are groups of people – the elderly, the immunocompromised – who are at greatest risk of dying from Coronavirus.

Ironically, some of the same people who will donate to help first responders will also suggest that “people at risk should stay home” and not walk around their neighborhood. Because those people who naively feel that they are immune to this virus deserve “a little happiness” in the form of mask-less parties or crowding the streets.

This type of behavior is trapping everyone; most significantly, older, immunocompromised people are forced to run for cover.

Can we all forgo a fleeting moment of entertainment to make sure the most at-risk people have safe spaces? To keep them alive?

If Coronavirus has taught us anything, we have learned that people are fragile. Important. Irreplaceable. No matter the age of the person. We have watched as nursing homes are overrun with virus-related deaths. We have heard stories of people talking to their elderly parents and grandparents through windows. These are the most vulnerable people, and we should be taking better care of them.

Yet, we exist in a Trumpian society, predicated on the survival of the fittest. The rest be damned. And, let’s face it. When someone suggests that “at risk people” should stay trapped in their homes so that they can congregate, you start to feel as if there is a clear disregard for others’ lives.

For many years, my mother has shouted the word “ageism” to me. And she was right. To make a general statement, as a country, we don’t prioritize our elderly. We force them into retirement before they want to leave. We talk around them rather than to them, because we have decided they won’t understand. We make decisions for them, sometimes without their input, claiming it is for the best. When it isn’t life threatening, it is merely socially unacceptable.

Maybe this crisis is the moment that we, as a nation, re-consider the way we treat older people. We can reflect and re-prioritize. Let us show the world that every living person is of the utmost importance to us. Their lives matter, and we will sacrifice for them. Let’s let our humanity, our personal generosity, shine through. In the end, that will be another incredible achievement.