Together, We Are Strong
California is opening up. Families and friends are able to meet indoors and touch and hug and kiss again. Schools are letting students back in, restaurants are offering indoor dining, even gyms are getting back in the groove. With vaccines readily available, it looks like we are slowly heading towards better times here. But I rest uneasy. Because oceans away, in another time zone, in a country that is my other home, the virus has turned horrendously deadly. And it has crept into my family as well.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been hunched over my computer and phone, keeping digital vigil as my parents, both in their 70s, fight off their sickness all alone in their tiny Kolkata apartment. I call every morning to check. Temperature. Oxygen. Blood sugar. The rest of the day, I watch the clock as they get their night’s sleep. Waiting, waiting, waiting for our evening, their morning, to call again. To check again. Temperature. Oxygen. Blood sugar. In between, I attend to the kids, try to work, try to stay sane amid the cognitive dissonance of a world returning to normal and a world crumbling into chaos. Over in Phoenix, my only sibling is doing the same.
Friends and colleagues here call, text, stop by. They bring food, and comfort, and support. Friends and neighbors there — our eyes and ears on the ground — do much more. They locate the hard-to-find meds, the out-of-stock oximeter, the places offering nourishing meals. I draw strength from each and every one of them. And it gives me such hope to know that there are hundreds of thousands of good folks out there who, everyday, offer this kind of selfless support to so many others — human and nonhuman — who are in trouble.
In the fog of these days, one thing shines clear: We need each other. We need community, and caring, and connection. I wouldn’t have made it through the past two weeks without these. Neither would have my parents.
I am, my family is, because you are.
Thank you for being.
Maureen Nandini Mitra
Editor, Earth Island Journal
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