10/7/20

By Josh Rubin

It’s cool this morning here in Brooklyn, and there is a breeze. Breezes are a good thing, because they disperse and dilute the particles that carry Covid. To the south of the neighborhood I live in, schools are being closed. It appears the long-predicted fall surge of the deadly virus has begun.

My son teaches first-graders at an elementary school on the edge of one of the zones where the virus is experiencing a revival. I worry about him, but he worries about Melissa and me more, so we have not hugged in many months. I never knew how hard it would be to go without those hugs; who would have imagined such a thing?

Soon it will be cold. The relief we have felt here, to be able to be outside and see each other at proper distance, will soon be over. Cold weather, and rising rates of infection will drive us back indoors. It will tax our already aching hearts, and we will look at the world through eyes even quicker to tears.

It is never easy to grow old, but it is harder now, I think, our dwindling time poisoned by the scourge of disease and the malevolence of injustice. A rallying cry of witnesses has been “don’t look away.” I want to confess to all that I would dearly love to look away, but I no longer know how. So, I stand here, at my window, looking out, a thousand miles to those who wait on the Mexican border, and another thousand, to the desperate columns of the needy rising in the south. And when I close my eyes, they are still there.