In a Changing World

Exactly a week ago, I called my daughter Jessica, a first-semester senior at Salem State University (for you Oregonians, that’s Salem, Massachusetts). I caught her just as she was coming out of class, so we chatted as she made her way across campus to drop her books off at the dorm, and we kept talking as she walked the mile or so to an old historic neighborhood she loves. We talked about coronavirus, of course, and about the growing sadness Jessica felt at the possibility that spring semester might not continue on campus. 

“These beautiful old houses,” my daughter Jessica said, describing the neighborhood to me. “One hundred years old at least. They saw the Spanish Flu for sure.” 

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

She asked me if I remembered the poem she’d recited for Poetry Out Loud her senior year: “September, 1918.” A poem written by Amy Lowell in another Boston area town, Brookline, who wrote of a stunning fall day when the world was at war and the future uncertain. 

I did remember—but faintly. 

“Here Mom,” Jessica said. “I still remember all of it. This afternoon was the color of water falling through sunlight / The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves” When she got to the last three lines, I had to take off my glasses and swipe my eyes with my sleeve. 

Jessa is studying public history. Her senior year in high school, she wrote and directed a one-act play set in December, 1917. Five teenagers “somewhere in rural America” trudge through snowstorm to their one-room schoolhouse, only to realize their teacher isn’t coming and the storm has worsened, trapping them in the schoolhouse. They start a fire in the potbelly stove and wait out the storm. The teenagers make paper snowflakes and write letters to a former classmate who is away in the trenches. They speak of rolling bandages and whether or not to enlist the minute they turn eighteen. 

This is from the director’s note:

Imagine what it would have been like to be a teenager exactly one hundred years ago. Adolescence in itself is such an in-between time. Imagine being a kid who’s not quite a kid anymore, expected to make adult decisions in a changing world. 

Jessica Harris

Director

On Sunday Jessa drove up to New Hampshire with her closest friends to spend the first part of Spring Break in a cabin owned by one of the kids’ relatives. Monday she called to let me know that the university was putting all classes online and clearing kids out of the dorms. She’d already sent an email asking to stay on campus since she’s from out of state. Or she could couch surf. Or stay with a friend in their parents’ basement. Or she could come home—if domestic travel remains an option.

She sounded okay, not panicked or frightened. I told her to enjoy this time with her friends—if she could. They were sad, she said, but enjoying each other. “This will probably be the last time we’re all together until fall …” her voice trailed off. If even then floated unsaid between us. 

Then, “Oh, Mom! It’s so dark here at night. Last night I saw the Milky Way!” They all lay on their backs and watched the stars until the night became too cold, and only Jessica was left. She stayed out alone, taking in the night. “So beautiful,” Jessa remembered, her voice full and steady. “I even saw a falling star.” 

They left the cabin Wednesday. The university has assigned staggered move-out times—Jessica’s is Saturday. She’s staying with a friend’s parents, not sure what’s next. The university will tell her by tonight whether her petition to stay in the dorms is approved. Flying home remains an option—a last resort, really. She’s worried that she might be a vector, that she’ll bring all her germs and everyone else’s with her. (I’m worried she might get sick, despite her youth.) Couch surfing, she observes, would spread germs from house to house—not to mention the added stress for host and guest alike. A dorm room on an empty campus seems to her the best way to isolate herself. She’ll have steady WiFi to finish her online courses. She can prepare her own simple meals. 

Jessica says her decision to remain on the East Coast feels weighty. If vulnerable family members get sick and die, if domestic travel shuts down, if this crisis stretches on and on … 

I can’t finish that sentence. I have to simply let the if hang without a corresponding then. I can’t think of the future, so I think of the past. I remember the teenager with such a passion for making history human and relatable. When she welcomed the audience to the school’s assembly hall and introduced her one-act play, Jessica asked us all to imagine what it would have been like one hundred years ago to be a kid who’s not quite a kid anymore, expected to make adult decisions in a changing world.