The truth is, I felt both things—happy for her and also sad for me. The further we got from home, the more sad I felt…I wasn’t going to be nearby if she needed me, and it wasn’t just for a night. The real sadness, I suppose, came from the realization that she wouldn’t need me, and also that for her the time would pass quickly. It is also true that I tend to be a bit morose on my birthday, dwelling annually on the fact that it all has to come to an end.
The pace of her growing up seems sped up by comparison to the two and half years of time we’ve just experienced with everything seeming to stand still. Now that the Earth is spinning again, it sometimes feels like it’s spinning out of control. Not only that, but the changes wrought by these two versions of Quinn’s life—the COVID version and the “post” COVID version—are starkly different. Six months ago Quinn might not have been able to accept such an invitation; twelve months ago she may not have even been able to consider it. Leaving home for two nights, being with a big group of girls she didn’t know, bowling—which she’s only done once or twice and may not be good at, playing soccer on someone else’s team, with coaches and teammates she’s never met?!?! There is just no way she would have felt able to do these things.
So much of this, her sixth grade year, has been like this—Quinn saying yes to all kinds of things she recently wouldn’t have even been able to consider. She advocated to play on the soccer team where she knew less people because she loved the coach and felt she would learn more. She signed up for an after school cooking class. She signed up for Tech Crew. She signed up for Ski & Ride, and indoor soccer for the winter, even though she’d have to go to the co-ed night since the all-girls night wouldn’t work. She filled out an application to be on the Governor’s Youth Council, and requested two letters of recommendation to complete it, and she handled her sadness about not being selected with grace. She has volunteered to stay after school to help with projects, and she’s attended parties and Fun Night dances and sleepovers with ease and excitement and joy.
In the past two years, she has experienced so little joy and so much anxiety. To see her navigate life, and school, and people and challenges right now is amazing. Sometimes I feel like I’m meeting a girl I’ve never met--at least one I haven't seen in a while. I’m so relieved for her, and so happy for her, and so proud. And of course I know life won’t always be smooth sailing—and that’s okay. For right now, whenever there is joy to be had, I want her to have it. I want to pump as much joy into her tank as possible so that she remembers what it feels like and looks like and how to find it…maybe that way she won’t feel such despair next time she feels lonely or alone.
Driving home after dropping her off I listened to a Hidden Brain podcast about loneliness. The host interviewed the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, who spoke about what he called “the epidemic of loneliness” we are suffering from as a culture. It spoke to me because I was lonely in that moment and I was overcome with sadness at the thought of always being lonely in the too-near future when Quinn will leave home.
From a biological perspective, Dr. Murthy explained, humans are hard-wired to be in the company of others, thanks to our origins when the physical survival of the species depended on our working together to defend against threats, to hunt, gather, shelter and reproduce. Emerging from those early cave days we have come to rely on each other less, but still our brains hold the fear response to being truly alone. On top of that, when we feel lonely, our brains are wired, out of fear, to be suspicious of attention and even to start feeling that we are to blame for our loneliness—we are alone, we might think, because we are unlikable or unlovable. It’s easy to see it become self-fulfilling.
In the discussion, Dr. Murthy also explained that loneliness often looks like something else. Alcoholism, he explained, is often a symptom of loneliness. Thinking of my father, after my mother’s death, it made easy sense, but then he went on to say that there are other manifestations, like depression, and anxiety, and even rage—three words I would use to describe Quinn’s experience in the two years before this one. Surely Quinn, like all of us, was lonely during those years, but I don't think I stopped to blame loneliness necessarily as the root cause of the other things she was experiencing.
Two Christmases ago, after a rare day of having company in the house, Quinn had a sudden, violent meltdown at bedtime. She wanted to sleep in our bed, and when we said no she screamed and raged—I remember it vividly. “I don’t want to be alone! I’m lonely!” She screamed at us in a way that was surprising, even confusing at the time. We’d just had a lovely day—but thinking back on it now, I can see it differently—it was her response to the saber-toothed reality of her isolation. Even this fall, after full and happy weeks of school, and Saturdays full of soccer and friends, she would turn bitter quickly at the notion of returning home to our house in the woods with no friends nearby until school would resume on Monday.
It’s stunning how fully our routines have turned around. Instead of the weekends being marked by a rising tide of dread at having to return to school on Monday, she seems to get lighter and happier as the prospect of school gets closer. I lost count of how many days last year, and the year before that, that she refused to go. Usually she would end up there, but not without a considerable fight—at home, in the car, in the parking lot. On more than one occasion she screamed at me right in front of the school, or headed toward the woods instead of the front door. I lost count of how many days I had to text her guidance counselor, or call her principal, and ask them to come out and help me get her into the building. Last year she refused to get her picture taken on picture day, and then she refused on the make-up day. She is frozen in 4th grade in the frame on our shelf; 5th grade, you would think, never happened, and in some ways it didn’t.
There is no good time in one’s life to experience a prolonged global pandemic, I know, and yet I can’t help but think the timing was particularly bad for Quinn. It arrived in the final months of her third grade year, a year that was going so well. It continued into fourth, cutting her weeks up into fifths, with some days “at home” and some days “in person.” The “at home” days were at a neighbor’s house since we had to go to school. And the “in person” days were only sort of in person. Attendance was unpredictable, depending on everyone’s exposure to the virus, and no one felt fully present as they hid behind their masks. She lost the confidence building months and celebration that would have marked her departure from elementary school. It followed her into middle school for fifth grade. By the two-year anniversary of the pandemic, she was panicky all the time—never sure what the next day would bring, what hoped-for thing would get cancelled, and what dreaded things she’d actually have to do. And her sense of self was deteriorated. She’d spent two years unable to count on anything, unable to read the faces or feelings of others, getting clear and constant messaging that she should not get too close to anyone else, and all this alongside the arrival of puberty—a time when her whole system was wired to worry about how she was being perceived by others, hyper-sensitive to social cues that were indecipherable and she was unable to read. Of course she was lonely. Of course she was anxious. Of course she was full of rage.
In September her school hosted an Open House. As we pulled into the long drive we could see cars parked everywhere and people everywhere. Last year she would have had me turn around; we never would have even parked the car. This year she strolled in ahead of me with a smile on her face. She greeted everyone she met. She showed me around proudly and engaged confidently in conversations. Sam was away, in Chile, and in his absence as a witness, it was hard to believe it was real.
On the way home I asked her, what had changed. She acknowledged that things are different this year. “I don’t know,” she said, “I guess I just have friends now.” We talked about the change in her approach. In previous months, when she was feeling anxious, her hood would go up, her head would go down, her arms would cross like armor over her chest. Kids, and even some adults, would read that as a warning to steer clear. Now she makes eye contact, she smiles, and people are drawn to her—reflecting back the energy she puts out in the world.
When you’re not lonely, you’re less suspicious. When you believe you are likable, you are. It is so logical. If only we could always be. I wish I could erase the multi-year experience of stress from her system, and put those years back on her life, but to do that would be to erase all the other memories in that time as well, and the incredible experience of watching her grow.
Fierce. Determined. Courageous. Courageous in a way I never had to be.
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