Readers Write: Pandemic revived child’s play for us

The Island Now

When I was 6 years old, a student in my elementary school was hit by a truck and killed. The entire school attended his funeral service. We sang “Amazing Grace.” Teachers wept in hallways and parents hugged their children in parking lots.

Around the dinner table on the night of the funeral, my mother warned my siblings and me to look both ways before crossing the street. She didn’t say it outright, but we knew what she was getting at: None of us are immune from the consequences of a twisted ankle and an over-tired truck driver, and through a series of ill-timed events there could be one fewer place setting at our table.

For weeks, I clutched my mother’s hand tightly when crossing the street. I suspiciously eyed passing trucks. It was the first time in my life I recall a cautionary tale having real-life consequences, as though the wolf had leapt off the page and devoured a classmate.

Like many New Yorkers, I reflect upon the last year with muddled perplexity. How quickly it all unfolded. From quaint guidelines on how to wash our hands, to work from home recommendations, to a sudden whir of ambulances at all hours, to death notices from friends and colleagues, to grotesque Zoom funerals.

The early days of the pandemic were marked by a myriad of coping mechanisms. There was the collective applause for our first responders from open windows and rusted fire escapes, and the constant phone calls and check-ins, but as I spoke with friends and family, I noticed a different pattern of adaptation. It involved what I’d call “child’s play.”

My own instance of child’s play arrived last March when I took up gardening. Now, admittedly, I had not planted a seed since a fifth-grade science project, yet I found myself tending to a ridiculous sea of lettuce jutting out of unmatched pots and planters. And I’m not alone. Replace the kale and spinach with puzzles and baked goods, and seemingly everyone adopted a “quarantine project.” One friend baked crumb cakes… so many, in fact, that the cakes became bird fodder. My brother set up a coral fish tank basked in blue light; I replied to photos of his Acropora with images of my Swiss chard. A work colleague drove to the beach each day to do yoga in an N95 mask. Another assembled 14 puzzles, a child’s play so common there was reported “puzzle inflation” at online retailers last May.

There is no mistaking that COVID-19 had a regressive effect in America; many of us navigated the early days of the crisis looking for a hand to squeeze. In its absence, we turned to puzzles, lettuce and fish tanks, the kind of rainy-day projects we would give to our children. A Nintendo Switch video game, “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” where players fish, garden, catch bugs, and furnish homes sold over thirty-one million copies and has an active adult following all over social media. Its success is no surprise; the video game simply simulated the zeitgeist virtually. And, let’s not forget the fireworks boom in June that led to a litany of noise complaints. Is there a more archetypal symbol of childhood rebellion than a lit firecracker?

I noticed that this very adult pattern of child’s play has waned in recent months. The bread makers are in the cupboards, the Pelotons collecting dust. Maybe we’re just tired. Or maybe we’ve learned the risks of COVID-19, and we no longer need to play. Defining the boundaries of peril is critical for every individual – we learn it on the playground as children – but it can also be limiting. Our own classifications of risk strip out creativity so gradually that we don’t even notice when it’s gone.

I think back to myself at the age of 6, standing at the curb’s edge, hearing the hum of traffic. When my mother observed the time it was taking for me to cross the street, she asked if I was afraid I would be hit by a truck. I nodded. I wish I could tell you her response, but I do not recall; it was something encouraging, I’m sure. All I know is that we kept crossing streets, and I’m no longer riddled with the fear of being flattened by an errant truck. But I also know that I needed to live with that anxiety for a time, to grapple with it, to grow from it. We might not know what to tell our children, our grandchildren or ourselves about this past year when we’re vaccinated and the pandemic is long behind us, but I hope we can remember what it was like to live with uncertainty, before we calculated the risks and left our sense of discovery behind again.

Matt Paczkowski

Glen Clove

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