An Unadulterated Sense of Wonder

A few weeks ago, my son’s eighth birthday passed and he didn’t get to have a party.  He spent the day watching TV and eating junk food. Although he seemed content, his mother and I were crushed.  Like most seven-and-a-half-year-olds, he had spoken excitedly about the kind of party he wanted.  None of his ideas involved social distancing. 

(This is one reason why I dislike the argument that we shouldn’t complain about or mourn the loss of little rituals because not dying is enough.  Living isn’t the same as being alive.  And many of the rituals wiped out by social distancing are critical to a meaningful existence.) 

A few days after his birthday, a package arrived on our front porch.  It was long and only a couple inches thick.  His uncle had bought him a skateboard—and not a toy version, either. My son went wild, of course, but I figured that after a day or two of frustration he’d lose interest.  That was his pattern:  get into something, do it for a while, give up.  He’d been asking about a skateboard since he was a toddler, but I never took it seriously.  He also wanted to be Spiderman.  

The first day was rough.  He couldn’t get onto the thing without falling.  I was no help.  Every time I tried to demonstrate, I ended up on my ass.  Forward progress was even harder.  I ran beside him as he moved along at middle-aged speed, both of his hands grasping my outstretched forearm.  He allowed me to pant for a few moments before we took off in the opposite direction.  Another week, tops, I predicted. 

But on the second day, he let go of my forearm.  For a second or two at first and then for long distances as I trotted alongside him.  Soon he was going down small inclines and then full-blown hills.  He raced ahead of me and I stood back in disbelief.  That was my baby zipping in and out of parking lots.  He looked like a small adult.  By day three, he could kick-push-and-coast down the entire block.  On day four, he was doing U-turns. 

He’s now in his second week, learning to stop and to control the angle of the board with his back foot.  With me lifting him by the armpits, he’s also testing simple tricks.  It will be a while before he masters any of this stuff, but I no longer doubt he’ll keep at it.  He’s slipped, stumbled, and fallen without having quit. 

It’s beautiful to see a child discover love of craft.  I feel older every time I help him practice, ragged and proud, but I know that on my deathbed, whether I’m on it next week or manage to stick around a few more decades, I’ll think about my little boy growing into an individual of great purpose during a time of pandemic. 

I suspect that for many people, those fortunate enough to survive, anyway, this will be a time of intense memory.  It sometimes feels like the pandemic is an existential affliction—not a mere outbreak that has disrupted the global economy, but a mutation of the world into something eerie and unknowable.  Public discourse is filled with tacit anxiety that we’re not returning to whatever each of us considers normal.  

But normal was already a tragedy for millions of people forced to exist in conditions of pandemic—lockdown, dearth, precarity—not because of a coronavirus, but as surplus organisms, economic pathogens under capitalism.  Normalcy is another health crisis.  

I’ve found a kind of peace in my exertion, a childish enthusiasm for fantasies of a joyful future, an unadulterated sense of wonder heretofore overwhelmed by the pain and stress of joblessness.  It emerges from the click and clack of an obstinate young boy powering through the world’s artificial dips and angles.  Suddenly, ebullient and dead tired, I’m determined to persist until this season of the unorthodox inspires another resurrection.