Reconnecting after Being Apart

I was crushed at first that Jo didn't rush into my arms after 15 months apart.

"Give Rita a hug," my best friend told her oldest daughter, a girl I held in the hospital when she was born and for whom I would do anything. After more than a year of knowing not to touch people and barely seeing anyone, she was understandably shy. She's only five, and spending fifteen months of that time apart is a big piece of her life. Did she forget me even thought we've been having video calls? All kinds of thoughts went through my mind.

"She can hug me when she's ready," I said.

After a couple of hours, Jo asked her mother to take us to the playground. She asked me to play freeze tag in a big green field. She tapped me and screamed FREEZE and then tapped me again so I would chase her. This went on for a while and finally she froze me and left me that way before she ran across the whole field.

"RITA!" she shouted from the other side, cupping her hands. "We are going to do the hug now!"

She started barreling toward me at full speed. UNFREEZE! she said from midway so I would run to meet her. When we were close she leapt into the air, hurtled into my arms and pressed her cheek against mine as she hugged me even tighter than she did the day she introduced me to her baby sister, one week before lockdown. That baby is now old enough to kick a soccer ball across a field and almost say my name.

I held Josephine and spun her around while she held on for dear life.

As we come back into spaces that once seemed familiar but now feel like museum exhibits or archaeological sites, we might not be ready to rush into it. The intimacy of shared rhythms have been broken. The pandemic isn't over and we didn't all make it, but those of us who did have survived a traumatic shared experience that still hasn't left us. Let's give each other space to renegotiate our feelings for each other, to be comfortable with ambiguity and trust that the spark is still there.