Let's Not Aspire to Normal

Credit to Artist:  Jennifer Wagner
Source:  Facebook post by Women of Appalachia, 4/22/2020

Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia, announcing the end of in-person instruction for the remainder of the school year but planning for students to return in the fall, remarked (Dominion-Post, 4/22/2020):

“This will be a memory in our rearview mirror.”

Really? Just a memory in the past?

Will the coronavirus epidemic mean so little?

My thoughts keep returning to the stories of World War II. We have all learned about shared sacrifice during WWII. Men and teenage boys went off to fight and die. Women left their homes and filled offices and factories to conduct business, run the government, and manufacture whatever was needed to supply the war machine. Rosie the Riveter, the iconic woman, was born. People bought war bonds, collected cans and newspapers. Those at home endured gas rationing, which limited travel. Imaginative cooks invented recipes to adapt to food rationing. Victory gardens to supply supplemental food were planted everywhere a patch of dirt could be found. Material for new clothes became unavailable, so skirts became shorter at the same time nylon stockings became luxuries available to few. Everyone chipped in.

I’ve never read a single account of anyone bemoaning the loss of a prom or a graduation ceremony due to the war. Perhaps this was aided by the run-up to the war: the Great Depression. Most people were accustomed to going without.

Perhaps that’s why I have so little understanding and, frankly, little tolerance for the loss many parents and students appear to be feeling and sharing today. I understand going without; that was my childhood. Knowing that I couldn’t have whatever I wanted was my normal. No doubt that colors my perspective today.

In retrospect, we know the public response to WWII was not all spontaneous and homegrown. It was aided by leadership. We were all in the fight together, everyone had a job to do, and everyone did it. And we could do it, successfully. Franklin Roosevelt, the messenger, made certain that message came through, loud and clear, with consistency. There was propaganda, indeed, but the propaganda was directed at unifying the people toward a common goal, not at elevating a single individual.

Did Franklin Roosevelt, or Harry Truman after him, ever say, soon this will be just a memory in our rearview mirror? Why would they?

No, once the war was over there was even more work to do: Millions of homes to construct, millions of returning GIs to educate and train, an interstate highway system to build, schools to expand to accommodate that post-war baby boom, diseases like polio to eradicate.

I don’t think anyone talked about “going back to normal.” Why would they? It belittles the effort that came before and reduces the incentives to undertake the efforts that need to come after.

I believe that the coronavirus epidemic has provided us with opportunity, along with all its death and economic destruction. Especially for those of us sheltering in place, one opportunity is the ability to take stock and assess what really matters in life. Our lives were so busy, so filled with stuff, we rarely had (or took) the time to do that before. I think families (kids and parents) bemoaning the loss of prom and graduation are missing out on supremely important lessons in their desire to “go back to normal.”

This is my opinion. Just an opinion. Understand that it is more reflection than judgment.

But, while you think I'm judging, let me be controversial here: It takes a lot of hubristic privilege to be concerned about proms and graduation ceremonies when literally surrounded by people dying by the tens of thousands, healthcare workers risking their lives during every shift, essential employees carrying on their essential and typically lowly functions despite the lethal risks to themselves and their families.

Now, back to reflection:

I’ve been told that prom and graduation (which in this conversation are symbols, let’s face it) are “rites of passage,” and that makes them important! Yes, rites of passage are important. But so is perspective.

In fact, we are smack-dab in the middle of the most extraordinary rite of passage of my entire lifetime and probably the lifetimes of most people alive today. And many of us are hellbent on ignoring its significance! Just letting it pass us by, in our eagerness to get back to normal.

Most of us alive now were born after the Great Depression and after WWII. Yet, the life-altering value of those events for the generations that experienced them is an established part of our cultural identity. What made those events life- and culture-altering? Possibly, a recognition of their importance for all of us, the shared experience, the weight of their impact.

Recently, I heard a different view, in one of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefings from New York. Following those briefings, I have never heard him talk about going back to normal. Instead, he cautions against it.

I have heard him talk quite openly and personally about not being able to visit with his elderly mother or his infected brother. I have heard him reveal publicly his own guilt about before, when he was too often too busy to visit Mom (he calls her “Mom”) when he could have. He considers this, then states as a simple matter of fact that not being able to do these things right now are necessary losses. I also have observed him light up the room as he talks about the unexpected gift of getting to spend time with his grown daughters who are staying-at-home and socially isolating with him. He willingly shares his reflections on his own experiences and circumstances, for our benefit.

And when he talks about what comes next, not now but when the time comes, he talks about rebuilding better, renewal. He talks about taking the lessons learned during the worst of the epidemic and the shutdown and using them for good. He treads on dangerously thin and frankly hallowed ice when he invokes memories of 9/11, before coronavirus, our most recent worst shared tragedy. After 9/11, he asserts, New York and even the United States came back better than before. He asserts that New York learned lessons from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and rebuilt better.

Agree or not on the specific outcomes of 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy, he rejects the notion of going “back to normal.” Surely, he says, we can learn and do better. This is wholly unlike the mantra of make America [or New York] great again, which is, of course, just another way of saying let’s get back to normal.

This is our opportunity. We will face emergencies again, climate change is bearing down on us, we are inextricably linked globally, and we have uncovered flaws in our society, our economic, government, health care, and other systems that need fixing. We cannot and should not just go back. If we go through all this pain and suffering and inconvenience and desperation and learn exactly nothing, it would be shameful. If we learn but do not apply the lessons going forward, it would be worse than shameful.

For those of us who survive:

   Never forget.

   Go forward.

   Do better.

   Do good

Let’s make this time mean something.

Rationing of Health Care

Suddenly, rationing of health care has become real to Americans because of the COVID-19 epidemic.  I want to cry.  I also feel the urge to laugh, hysterically.

Rationing has always been real to some Americans.  It’s the American way:

For the uninsured part-time worker who puts off going to the doctor because the sign in reception says, “fee is payable at the time of visit.”

For the full-time worker with or without insurance who cannot take time off for fear of losing their low-wage job.

For the Medicaid or Medicare beneficiary who cannot find a provider in their community who will accept public insurance.

For the single parent who sets aside their own health needs and instead puts every resource, however meager, into keeping their children healthy.

For the underinsured with high co-pays and/or deductibles who must choose between health care and rent or food.

For the folks living in the rural areas chronically underserved by the health care system.

For the impoverished who lack transportation to doctor appointments.

For those living so distant from a health care facility that seeking care, even in an emergency, is impractical or impossible.

For those navigating poverty who accepted illness without medical intervention before and bravely hope that their family member will be lucky again this time.

For anyone who is uninsured and therefore faces the highest prices, because it takes insurance to benefit from negotiated discounts.

For someone simply denied access to care because they lack proof of insurance or ability to pay.

I could go on … and on.

Rationing, which has always been real to some Americans, is now becoming real to all Americans, even privileged Americans.  Privilege includes those who have never experienced rationing American-style, but also those who have never understood that others experience it.  Every day, every year.