Thinking Allowed: Longing

Within minutes of entering our room, Tova ran to the window, looked at the view, and said "I have to go out there." It is going to be a long two weeks, I thought. And it is true that Tova's desire to leave this room has persisted day to day. Every day she uses her overdeveloped imagination to come up with new reasons as to why we need to leave the room. "If we get hurt will they let us out?" "What if we tell them we really really need to go out. Even a little" "We tested negative can we go out now" "I don’t feel sick, let's tell them so we can go out" I feel bad for her, I really do because keeping Tova indoors is like throwing a boomerang in a bedroom. We are a room full of wasted potential energy. She sits at the window with eyes full of longing throwing out heartbreaking one liners "I don't even remember what ants look like!" It is the worst in the evening when the lights adorning the trees in the courtyard we overlook come on. Tova wants to be among those lights running and laughing so badly. She looks at me grumpily when I tell her I can pour water on her head like it is raining. We all long to be outdoors but none of more than Tova. She came into bed with Jakob and me one morning, looked thoughtful, and then proceeded to talk endlessly about how wonderful Moses is (her personal hero) and how it would be good if he could come back to life. And then I really didn't see this one coming but she proclaimed "If Moses was here he could get us out of quarantine." Yes, so true, we probably need Moses to lead us to freedom.

Meanwhile, while Tova longs for the outdoors, Zadie's longing remains steadfastly with her mother. Being locked in a room together is not enough for this attached child. When I shower, she sits outside the door crying for me. When she is in a room without me, she yells for me to join her. She watched a movie with her sisters and when it was over ran to find me, gave me a big hug, and proclaimed "I missed you so much Mama." So, unexpectedly, Zadie is full of quarantine longing as well, but the longing is to be even closer.