No Visitors Allowed

We live in a state that was hard hit by Covid-19: New Jersey. We also had heavy-handed measures mandated by our governor, Phil Murphy, who entered into a regional agreement—they called it a “collective state policy”—with governors Cuomo in New York, and Lamont in Connecticut. Governor Murphy called us knuckleheads, and told Tucker Carlson that knowledge of the Bill of Rights was above his pay grade. The logic behind the “collective state policy” seems to have been the bigger the stick, the more fear we would have in disobeying them. King Solomon teaches that “A cord of three strands is not easily broken.” That wisdom was borrowed in 2020 by the governors of my state and others, repurposed to keep the citizens of their triad in line.

We are a multi-generational household. When the pandemic began in 2020, four of our five grown children—three daughters and a son—plus a teenaged granddaughter, lived with my husband and me. Our fourth daughter lived 18 miles west with her husband, in their own house in a small village. She still does. There’s no need for me to explain how we got to where we are. We didn’t expect that our grown children and teen grandchild would be living with us, or that we would live during a pandemic ‘lock down’, but life often goes in directions unforeseen. We’re fortunate we have good, decent, and helpful children, and a home large enough to accommodate all of us comfortably.

Decades earlier, we had had four daughters in five years. Then there was an eight year gap before our son David was born. The girls were thrilled to have a brother, and we were equally happy to have girls and a boy to love, and experience their differences. Those years rushed by.

By Spring of 2020, when the pandemic began, David had graduated from Rutgers with his B.A. in History. He lived at home while in college, commuting to Rutgers New Brunswick after earning his A.A. at community college. He was a focused student, and received the Dean’s Award from Rutgers for maintaining a 4.0 GPA. He worked at a local country club while in school, as a line chef in the kitchen. In the summers he also worked at the local Jewish Community Center—managing the snack bar, assisting the CEO, doing stats for the basketball leagues, preparing the weekly senior luncheon, whatever needed to be ...