Vaccination reunion

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At the end of the month, I will see and touch my only child for the first time in over a year.

I’m not as excited as you might think. 

I’m not even as excited as I might think. I have actually become used to communing with her on the phone.

We rarely use FaceTime or any other visual aid. We just talk for an hour or more every few days. Some weeks, we talk every day. That’s what we do. 

She’s about to turn 21. We have always been close, especially after her mother died 10 years ago. We converse easily.

I like her roommates, so she often puts her phone on speaker in their apartment near the university they attend in Minneapolis. I appreciate the relationship with these much younger, good people. I try not to give them too many opportunities to tell me, “OK, Boomer.” 

I am grateful that my daughter and I had a close relationship before COVID-19. A lot of other parents now separated from their children insist on Zoom or some other visual communication, but they may not get it very often.

We were perhaps lucky to be already experienced in hardship when the pandemic started. Neither of us have more than a handful of close relatives left. We beat the loneliness that comes with a lot of loss, I think, by concentrating on the living.

We have tried to develop relationships with other people so that we are happier in our lives and don’t depend on each other for too much of our emotional sustenance. It’s a lucky person who can open his or herself to love and friendship without making a big deal about it.  

Even so, I was physically alone for most of the pandemic. That included periods of illness after being hospitalized, when I recovered at home, including a couple of weeks hooked up to a catheter. 

The telephone became an important source of relief. The people on the other end who make my life livable include an old girlfriend, a college friend, an ex-boss, the widow of an old pal, a couple that befriended us after the loss of my daughter’s mom, former work-related friends and some new friends. I am forever in their debt. Love, always.

Last weekend, I met one of those friends 30 miles away in Libertyville. Afterward, I called and arranged to meet two others, as long as I was in Lake County. It was glorious. I should have been doing that all along.

I don’t ever want to take people I care about for granted. I’ve done that before. For me, that’s one of the most important lessons of the pandemic.

As the country opens up, there are all kinds of entertaining things I will be able to do again. But they won’t be worth much risk unless I’m doing them with people I want to know forever.

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