She never cried when her son went off to school. She was far and away too excited for him to engage, learn, and take flight into a new world called kindergarten. She thought, perhaps, something might be wrong with her. Why didn’t she mourn her toddler’s transition into the public-school system with abandon, trepidation or tears?

Covid-19 now sits comfortably amongst the greatest pandemics of all time. It’s infected 612 million people in every nation of the world, according to Johns Hopkins University, and killed 1.2 million in the United States. U.S. President Joe Biden recently declared, “the pandemic is over,” but the statement belies a Public Health Emergency still addressing 400 fatalities per day. Sending her children to college during these historic years presented a confounding challenge.

All rites of passage for teens — high school prom, graduation, sports, activities and avocations — were decimated during the Spring of 2020. In her son's case, rowing season was suspended indefinitely thus deterring the oldest intercollegiate sporting event in the United States. His senior classes in physics, math, and all other prerequisites for a college engineering degree were cancelled. Commencements in 2020, in particular, saw all seniors around the U.S. given an option to ‘Pass or Fail’ in their final semester, effectively eradicating their last developmental steps with responsibility.

That I May Serve

Virginia Tech is renown as a research university in Blacksburg Virginia. Moreover, it is the first four-year public institution (among the 11 former confederate States) to admit black undergraduates. At the time when the Commonwealth of Virginia enforced Jim Crow laws — racial segregation in public and private schools — Virginia Tech was proudly enrolling the first black students. It can fairly be said their motto “Ut Prosim” has been guiding their alma mater for nearly 150 years with the mantra, “That I may serve.”

The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter appeared on social media in 2013 — after the shooting death of African American teen Trayvon Martin — and launched a social movement advocating for non-violent civil disobedience against all racially motivated violence against black people. The movement returned to national headlines following the killing of George Floyd, and an estimated 26 million people joined the Black Lives Matter protests around the world. However, not all of those marching in the protests were African American, turning the combined interracial protests into the largest civil rights movements in history. The coming together of many different races was a reaction to government shutdowns, shelter in place orders, and the general economic anxiety associated with Covid-19.

Fear stokes racism, and racist thoughts and actions often arise from prejudice: a preconceived opinion not based on reason or actual experience. As she packed up her son’s belongings, oscillating between emotions of joy and concern, she realized she was growing anxious. After he leaves for college, she thought, she will no longer have oversight nor control of his environment. Social distancing, face masks, and hand sanitizer were the order of the day, but do college freshmen actually comply? As a low risk demographic, are teenagers concerned, compliant, or avoiding the protocol? Having reached the threshold of young adulthood, she began to wonder what type of job she’d done as a parent, and if or whether her son would serve society, humanity, or self?

The Empty Nest Syndrome

All parents are susceptible to the Empty Nest Syndrome, a feeling of grief and loneliness associated with a child leaving home for the first time. The American Medical Association confirms that the Empty Nest Syndrome is not a condition but a phenomenon, and psychologists explain the emotions are typically driven by a fear of the unknown, and the inability to control their young's environment.

Symptoms of empty nest syndrome can include depression; the loss of a sense of purpose, feelings of rejection, worry, stress, anxiety and fear over their offspring's welfare. Parents who experience empty nest syndrome often question whether or not they’ve prepared adequately for their flock to live independently.

Fear is not merely an abstract emotion induced by a perceived danger or threat, it’s a physiological response that leads to behavioral change. “If you are worrying that something will happen — don’t let it,” her husband always said, and she’d admit to conflating emotional reactions with measured response. Throughout the years, she’d often ruminate in worry about something until sharing the possible scenario with him. His words were a call to action. A reminder to get to work. She called them ‘Eureka Moments’ every time he said them, and when their young went off to kindergarten, she realized that they’d done the work, gave them what they could, taught them what they knew. There was no need for tears.

Over 5,000 U.S. colleges and universities have and continue to react differently to the pandemic. UNC Chapel Hill and Notre Dame initially sent their students home. Cornell and Georgia Tech instituted a high-volume surveillance testing program. Brown, Duke and Rutgers were all sued for tuition refunds; distinguishing the college experience from a college education. Gen Z — who’ve never known life without the internet — were virtually consigned to it.

As students return to campus for the third new school year since the pandemic began, colleges and universities are now evenly split by the protocol. George Washington University requires masks, vaccinations, boosters, even viral testing for all returning students. Catholic University, just few miles away, has no requirements.

National Security

When the Spanish Flu and Great Depression passed one another in the first half of the 20th century unemployment fell to 23%, the GDP fell 15% worldwide, and the pandemic infected 500 million people throughout the world. Statistics and circumstances eerily on par with the present day. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” was a calculated response designed around the 3 R’s — Relief, Recovery, Reform — which collectively rebuilt the staggering infrastructure into the most powerful economy on earth. But he also intended it to be the most inclusive. In a letter to his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, he wrote, “Let there be no forgotten men, no forgotten races.”

Despite the disproportionate way in which Covid-19 attacked people of color, its legacy would inadvertently highlight that inequality. White, college-educated Americans saw their jobs recover quickly into remote work, and their wealth balloon as the stock market and housing sectors reached unprecedented new heights. Many racial minorities, in particular, low earners, and those without a college degree fell unemployed and into poverty.

If FDR directed the federal government during the Great Depression, Biden has presided over a pandemic he now declares over. Gun safety legislation (the first in 3 decades), the Chips and Science Act > Innovation Act > and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 puts a collective U.S. $1 trillion on the table to turn back inflation, reduce the deficit, and re-create an eco-friendly world that all Americans can enjoy and afford. “There are two things we should give our children,” Joe Biden told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. “One is roots and the other is wings.”

Afterword

They passed like ships in the night. In December 2019, the very first headlines of a strange virus originating in Wuhan China was coinciding with her husband’s final bow from a long and courageous battle with cancer. Though his death presaged the early hours of Covid-19, then little more than faint news alerts from faraway places, she’s stood up straight most days since his passing and refused in the wicked months and years the fetal position, the reluctance to leave the nest. Outings, chores and routines struggled for normalcy in a world that saw 6.5 million people perish, schools shuttered, and economies careen toward a recession and one very particular class. “If you're afraid something will happen — don’t let it,” he said, and with that she wrestled and began to spread her wings

Sunlight filtered through the pitifully gnarled branches splaying images of white birch on heath and hull. The sun came out, and, without opening her eyes, she stirred and began exploring the other side of the nest with her legs. Neither twine nor twig was warm on his side and she wouldn’t know — for a few more blissful moments yet — just how terribly long they’d all been gone.

For Angela Gala
Wife, Mother, Influencer