On the Beach

A few days ago I was on a three-way call with my brother and sister. Naturally the COVID-19 crisis was a prominent topic of conversation. The virus was already at work in our home states as well as the nation, but we had the sense that we were still awaiting its arrival. It was the same feeling we recalled from our childhood years in North Carolina, when a hurricane was blowing toward our shores and we braced for its landfall.

After we said our goodbyes I reflected on the analogy and realized that for me another one came closer to the mark. It was a scene near the conclusion of “Deep Impact” (1998), when the main character, long estranged from her father, joins him on the beach at their summer house. They know that soon an asteroid will strike off shore to set off a tidal wave that will drive dozens of miles inland, sweeping all before it. Yet they stand close beside each other, facing the ocean, at peace and unafraid.

No analogy is perfect, and neither is this one. For them the wave will be the end; it will sweep them away as if they had never existed. The pandemic is not like that. I expect it to be pervasive; indeed, I expect that ahead of me lies a moment when I will test positive for the virus. But I do not think it presages my extinction. The disease feels pre-ordained; death does not. And anyway I’m not much concerned for myself. I worry more about my little girl. I’m grateful that by and large the virus seems to spare children, or at least not kill them.

All the same, I feel as if I am facing the ocean, and out at sea a green wall is coming into view.