A note: Duane Wright. Adam Toledo. When will it end? This has become a painful time for many Americans, not even a year past George Floyd. Today’s piece references those events but does not focus on them exclusively. My intention is not to gloss over the injustice, but to hold the complexity of what it means to be human right now in all its fullness. The pain and the joy. My stance on policing in this country is simple: Divest from force. Invest in care. Now.
There’s a street where I’ve walked almost every day of this pandemic. It’s not in my neighborhood but it’s close, and it’s lined with giant trees that shade me from the Carolina heat. On weekday mornings I go alone while John and Herbie take a brief walk in our neighborhood, and at the end of the day the three of us take another long one together. Double walk days have kept me afloat for a year.
On the weekend we often visit my shady street as a family. Last Sunday on the way there, my eyes locked on a playground at the park. Kids were swarming and parents huddled nearby.
“Remember when that entire playground was wrapped in plastic?,” I asked. “It’s hard to believe that even happened.”
“Yeah,” John answered. “The zombie apocalypse.” I squinted as we drove by, willing myself to remember.
“Some playgrounds were wrapped in plastic, and the others had signs that said WARNING: PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK.”
“We take kids on playgrounds for granted,” John said. Then he paused. “Not last year.”
The playgrounds I saw on Sunday looked like something from our old life: casual gathering spots where parents let their kids blow off steam. Not outbreaks waiting to happen or cesspools of disease. Just a place for kids to play.
My perspective must be shifting. It seems I’m able to see humans do human things with fewer alarm bells going off in my head.
That’s not to say this pandemic is over—far from it. Someone close to me had a Covid scare this week, and spikes are raging even as vaccination numbers climb. But thanks to those increasing vaccinations, we’re feeling safer and easing into a little more contact.
Hopefully that contact remains thoughtful, but it is contact nonetheless. As I considered kids on playgrounds and other things that used to feel normal, I remembered that we’ll have no tidy ending to this chapter. We won’t get a national text alert declaring that handshakes are safe again.
As a group we will drag ourselves out of this pandemic much like we entered it: with varying degrees of caution and comfort; with behaviors both reckless and wise; with murky realities and unknown risk.
My husband, a musician, is seeing this play out professionally. One orchestra he works with recently started performing again and has a full season ahead; another won’t consider concerts till March 2022. One group only meets if schools do, and another has furloughed all musicians until further notice.
There will be no clear page turn between this chapter and the next. No day, for example, that every orchestra will decide they can offer large concerts again.
Whether we want to or not, we’re growing accustomed to living with discomfort. As the fractures in our country seem to widen, or rather, expose what was always there, we co-exist not only with disease, but with police killings, racial injustice, and civilian shooters run rampant. If you’re like me, you feel the despair of each event deeply, and also go on living your life. You have to. You call a friend, take two walks a day, and make dinner for your family.
Our spirits are divided—relentlessly and without rest—between horrors that feel impossible to repair and the everyday tasks that make a life. Which include joy and pleasure. We can’t seem to live a day in this era without feeling the brakes slam and lurch us in another direction. All too often that direction is, if you’re paying attention, one that’s agonizing for humanity.
With immunity on the rise, I’ve found myself fantasizing about gatherings of all shapes and sizes. Apertivo hours in my garden; monthly potlocks for reconnection; book exchanges with friends; Sunday brunches with Bloody Marys; dance parties.
Many of the questions we’re holding right now don’t have immediate answers. We don’t know what the virus will do. We can’t repair centuries of white supremacy and systems fueling needless death overnight. The joy we’re craving will come—and inevitably be wedged against injustice.
As theologian Serene Jones, who appeared here last week, points out when she likens this period to the Reformation, we likely won’t be around to see all the fruits of our labor. Those of us trying to write, speak, donate, volunteer, vote, and imagine a new world into being won’t get to know how history remembers it. Yet we still sense that now is the time. We are the generation to say no more.
Doing that work without knowing where it leads requires faith. Not faith in the religious sense, but faith in humanity. In justice. Our better impulses. We are tasked with simply believing that our action makes a difference, that our small wins will someday add up to a greater, more loving whole.
Like the signs at the park said, play at your own risk. There’s no answer but to engage wholeheartedly with the good and the bad. We’ll have moments that make sense and plenty that don’t. The friction in our lives—joy against tragedy, power against truth, ease against tension—is here to stay. As you hold it all, as you reckon with the weight of injustice, as you grieve—feel what you must. But never forget that connection and pleasure are worth fighting for, too.
Between you and me—
This week I watched Down the Dark Stairwell, a documentary about the death of Akai Gurley, an innocent Black man shot by a Chinese American police officer named Peter Liang in 2014. Liang was the first NYPD officer to be charged for such an event in more than a decade. The questions asked by this documentary feel very hard to answer, which is exactly why it’s worth your time.
Tonight we are having our first dinner party in over a year. It will be outside but still! I love sharing food and in some ways believe dinner parties could save the world, so I’m looking forward to it. May our future hold many more.
WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE is written by Lauren Maxwell. If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider supporting it in some way. You can become a sponsor, click the heart, share online, or forward to a friend. Thank you so much!
Love this article. So much depends on imagining better ways to spend the billions we allocate to state-sanctioned violence, policing at home and imperialism/war abroad. As a country we have so much money we could use instead to take care of each other. Wish I could teleport to your dinner party!