Last Thursday I walked onto the second floor hallway as the teachers were putting up streamers and decorations for Purim. My breath caught as I remembered how, just in October, we took down the Purim decorations that had been adorning our building since it so abruptly closed last March, before we all hibernated into our own silos. And now, in what has surely been the longest shortest time, our school is decorated for Purim once again.
This week we approach the one year anniversary of the world as we knew it shutting down. Whether you count by the Jewish calendar and remember Purim as the last time we gathered as a community, or whether you count by the secular calendar and consider March 11th the last day of pre-pandemic life, it’s been a year. Twelve months of zoom and COVID school, of missed birthday parties and weddings, of uncertainty and disorientation, of deep loss and grief. There is a lot of emotion as we approach this anniversary.
I stopped using the word “unprecedented” a long time ago - it was so often repeated by everyone, everywhere, that it felt trite by April. But it really is the appropriate word to describe the experience of this past year. And something that is unprecedented has repercussions. We know that our brains are pattern-seeking. As adults, our patterns of behavior have certainly changed, and I know many of us are concerned about the patterns developing in children. I recently sat on a panel of international school leaders, and as the educators from Italy, Sri Lanka and Nairobi all spoke, we found solidarity in what we are collectively witnessing, whether students were at school or on zoom: We see increases in childhood anxieties. We see regression of social, emotional and developmental milestones. We see children much more comfortable with a handful of peers than in a large group. We see children more cautious to approach others. For our younger children, this year represents a large percentage of their life, and therefore of their experience of living. Our older children comprehend the events and ramifications of the pandemic in ways that will inform who they become as adults, just as the Depression and World War II did for our grandparents.
I don’t mean to paint a picture that’s all gloom and doom - there have been some beautiful consequences of this year as well. Our families have had unstructured time, enjoyed one another’s company, laughed and slowed down. Our community has banded together. Our children have (often) learned to get along with siblings they didn’t necessarily enjoy as much when they had other options. But I think it’s essential that as we come upon the one year anniversary of the time when all our lives changed, and when all of these new patterns of behavior began to take shape, we mark it with intention.
Marking time is important for all humans to do - it’s one way that we make meaning out of our experiences - but it’s especially important in Judaism. We mark a week, a month, and a year after a person dies. We celebrate holidays based on historical events that happened thousands of years ago. The Jewish calendar is so full of time specific events that we acknowledge the one month of the year, Heshvan, in which they are absent. I am convinced it’s crucial that we also mark time in pandemic world - which has in so many ways felt somehow separate from time as we usually know it - to honor this significant epoch in our lives and to remind ourselves that it’s not all “blursday.”
But what does it look like to mark time when you are actively in the midst of the thing you are marking? What is our goal? And how do we commemorate this one-year anniversary in a way that gives us and our children strength to continue navigating through the ongoing pandemic? We are not in a moment (yet) in which we can say “that’s behind us - what can we take away from it?” but we can still reflect on the year, consider what we have learned and lost and gained, and make decisions about how to move forward:
-
Remember that this, too, shall pass (really!). While we know that our brains are pattern seeking, it is also true that the neuroplasticity of our brains can shift. I hear so many parents worried about how this pandemic is impacting their children’s development. While our children’s growth has shifted because of the past year’s events, the patterns we have now are not the patterns we will have forever.
-
Do something to commemorate the year. You might want to take a zoom-free day, write a letter to your future self, find a special hike, or mark the time with silence - but specifically acknowledging the anniversary, and doing something to mark it as a specific moment in time, helps us to make meaning and to categorize this time in our life.
-
Name what has helped you. As a school, we are making time capsules with our students, in which they are sharing one resource that has helped through the last year. You don’t have to make an actual artifact to think about who and what has kept you grounded.
-
Celebrate what you have accomplished. Many of us weren’t sure how we would get through two weeks of distance learning. We've now managed 50 weeks of living in COVID world. Accomplishments come in all shapes and sizes (not just 1000 piece puzzles and sourdough bread starters). Try to recognize the full range of ways in which you’ve gotten through this.
It’s going to take time to fully unpack the meaning of this chapter for ourselves and for our children - but that is work for another time. We are still in the midst of the pandemic, and at this point, it is important that we simply find ways to commemorate one year of these unprecedented - yes, unprecedented - times. So while Purim will look different this year, I am going to take time to breathe in some lessons from this year, to feel gratitude for the people and resources that have sustained me, to grieve the friend-filled Purim seudah I wish I were attending, to ensure I have enough sustenance to continue on the journey, and to feel gratitude for the Purim decorations that, once again, adorn our hallways.
