7-10 Split: The Pandemic, Bowling, and Choices

My son texted me a picture of a lane at a bowling alley. My gut reaction was to ask him if he was wearing a mask. He’s 34.

Instead I said, “Cool!” I figured he’d sent the picture because he remembered our taking him and his siblings there years ago, a bowling alley in the basement of an old, old commercial building, no windows, no ventilation. When we went there, the cigarette smoke hung like fog on the North Sea, pale guys working on last night’s buzz ringed the bar, maybe they even kicked us out because we had kids, I don’t remember. It’s an iconic place, this bowling alley, you had to be hip to be there. The un-hip got sorted out real quick – like us with our kiddos.

It’s not my business to be talking about my son and the pandemic except to say that it’s easier than it sounds to be single and living alone – working all day and then going home, watching the news, hearing tell of the next wave coming, how we should all hunker down, stay home, and wear masks, for God’s sake, wear a mask!

I am fine now but there were many times during the past year that it was only my husband keeping me afloat, that’s how profound and deep my dread about the pandemic was. It was our routine and his steadiness and good humor that pulled me through. I’d like to think I did the same for him but that would be true only insofar as I provided a project to which he could be devoted. My son doesn’t have either of those things.

He has to keep his own body and soul together. That’s a very big rock to push up the hill. Overwhelming, sometimes, crushing. So I’ve stopped hectoring him about wearing a mask and started respecting that he’s gotten this far on his own – intact, in one piece, able to keep a job, and send a text from a bowling alley on a Sunday afternoon. I ought to be glad for him, I think, and not zero in on the one thing that, more than anything, represents my year’s long anxiety about the pandemic. Was he wearing a mask?

He might have been, I don’t know. I do know he was bowling and I was glad.