Co(vid)-dependence

Part of my winter ritual includes interviewing prospective freshmen for my alma mater which becomes more and more beloved to me as I gradually become a little too old to be informationally useful to these young hopefuls.   It's incredible to me that it's been more than fifty years since I entered those academic rooms, with trepidation.  Some of us are brought up by parents who praise and bolster our visions and ambitions, but many of my generation were born into families that had narrowly escaped some form of hardship, and banked their future heavily on children.  So while my grades and tests were okay, the passions of my heart-- music and art-- were very little valued.  I entered college feeling sub-par, a bit useless and untalented.  

Face-to-face interviews were always standard, but the pandemic has prohibited meetings.  Personally I choose now to interview 'blind', by telephone without images.  God forbid these students (most of whom are scholarship applicants) should feel pressured to create a zoom 'set' for the likes of me.  Audio-only just seems more democratic and elicits a different set of responses.  Many of the names are difficult to pronounce; their origins and ethnicity, in the current climate, have become part of their currency, and predictably it takes very little time for them to reveal their affiliations and sources of pride.  I notice the Afro-American students are very Black-Lives-Matter confident.  They are involved and active-- they display healthy awareness and explain readily how they are going to integrate academics and community.  

But this year I have maybe selfishly tried to have a real dialogue about the challenges of the last two years.    I generally speak with many Asian students and once they begin to relax, they reveal things. Many of them use the word 'introvert' to describe themselves.  Their families are close-knit and often crowded into small apartments with multi-generations and new fears about the elder's vulnerabilities. But they spoke also about the hate-crimes perpetrated in their neighborhoods; their families were more protective and less permissive; one of them had a relative who was shot.  

So here are urban teenagers who two years ago were the most sophisticated-- now living a sort of claustrophobic, a-social existence. Many had been sophomores when the quarantine began-- just beginning to sprout wings and relationships... two years later they have been deprived of normal teenage rituals, and the natural intimacy of classroom camaraderie.  No one brushes their hand as they pass on the stairwell, slips a paper note.  There is no one to imitate-- dress, behaviour-- to envy, to dislike, to crush on.  I remember when my son was a teenager the operative word was 'random'... everything was 'random'. In my life, so many of my encounters and epiphanies were these privileged random moments and meetings-- this is why we live in a city of millions of intersections and concurrences.  Today-- this year and last-- nothing is random. While former life glided by on a metaphorical ice-rink, now we are slugging along in weighted deep mud. Two of my interviewees actually used the word 'depressed'.  Yes, we are having a major mental health moment here... and children are the most fragile of all because the present is everything for them.  They spoke in the third person but this is a crucial point. 

My son is so positive.  He never complains or worries me.  He's tough and goes forward, no matter what.  I am so impressed, especially coming from my single parenting as an open-hearted but honest human with flaws on display and worries.  Paralleling the not-always-accurate rapid tests, there is an epidemic of this sort of false positivity.  No worries, these people say.  Even the late-night hosts... they joke about roombas and their grooming lapses, etc... but they don't see the home of one of the girls I interviewed who wakes up in a one-bedroom apartment that houses 7 people... and tries to find a place to set up her iPad... no privacy, but also no companionship. The dignity with which she simply described, without a hint of complaint. 

Today I saw that Princeton has cancelled communal dining for now; meals are grab-and-go.  I could feel the anxiety of a first-year student who is shy and often a little isolated.  They don't always communicate insecurities because they are in a challenging environment and they are pressured to keep up.  I know my own first semester I often lingered over lunch and dinner, enjoying the company of others.  It is where I met my future roommates and boyfriends.  I felt connected.  It's probably part of the explanation for the well-documented weight-gain of new students.  Meals are their sanctioned down-time and they prolong it-- rationalized procrastination.    

Children are incredibly resilient.  They adjust to moving, to new siblings, family upheavals and even illness with amazing flexibility and courage.  Snow days, cancellations- for some these are new and fun.  They have time with family, time with social media.  But for others, it is like a punishment-- a sentence to be confined in a non-nurturing household.  Some of them are fragile and alone. Personally I would have gone crazy.  

Even now, among my adult circle, there are many who have adjusted with that positive facade to solitude. They post and write and play and sing.  Others are more shadowed.  Some have confessed their depression and sadness to me.  I share mine... the sort of crippling effect of 'less'.  For older people social interaction is harder.   I see friends who have become a little too comfortable with the curtain of quarantine, like a kind of life-mask they may never want to remove. For most of us musicians, we miss so terribly the casual real-time conversation of our instruments.  What I see on Facebook and on television for the most part is diminished... uninspired.. the tributes and re-makes... I am disappointed, mutually uninspired.  It's an unfortunate downward cycle from which I hope we will recover... but I have lost confidence. I am not like my son, and wear my broken heart often on my raveled sleeve.   

For these newly-labeled adults, I hope their worlds are not permanently set back by this strange vaccinated world order. I hope the institutions realize there is more discrepancy than ever in the lives of young students.  It's harder than ever to evaluate the potential of people who have been thwarted in their very sensitive growth years.  I pray for them... I feel their pain, even when they conceal it.  For my friends,  I am here-- a little useless with my open heart and my inadequate output, but still here, thanking God for the ones that remain.