Every day, since October, I have made a routine of heading out for a three mile walk. I recognize I begin posts like this often, but they allow me the ability to collect my thoughts and make observations about the outside world. I live in a residential area and file past home after suburban home, noticing the trends afoot, laid out in front of me. I’ve noticed an increase in ribbons and bunting around mailboxes. Some are in light blue, some in pink. I’m not sure if this a distinctly American custom or just a Southern one, but it designates that a family has recently had a baby. Light blue means a boy; pink means a girl.
In roughly six months of walking, I’ve seen more and more mailboxes adorned this way. It makes me wonder if we’re experiencing a COVID baby boom of a sort. I suppose during quarantine there’s not much else to do. I recognize this is highly subjective and anecdotal evidence, but it is interesting. A massage therapist friend of mine has noticed a recently sharp increase in the number of pregnant women she sees as clients. There may be something to this after all.
When we finally can heave a collective sigh of relief and when all of us are vaccinated, maybe we’ll have the ability to see if there is indeed an influx of new births in the 2020-2021 period. This could lead to all sorts of unforeseen complications—a need for teachers, pediatricians, doctors—the list goes on and on. As I examine this idea further, I recognize that taking on an additional child might be more of a financial impediment for certain people rather than others, but this part of the country is affluent, mostly white, and well-educated.
I’m 40 now. Most of my friends who are my age or a little younger have married by now, much later than in previous generations, and they have decided to have only one child. On one level, it doesn’t make much sense to add dependents to a family when so many of us are experiencing a financial pinch. But perhaps certain couples decided, for their own reasons, to have a child now rather than later. Larger trends, as I said, will be difficult to discern for the foreseeable future. Certain people I know are having quite a time in scraping by, other people have been able to absorb the financial hit more easily.
We may soon emerge from this recession. Ironically, vaccine production has proven to be a boon to pharmaceutical companies, which may aid with economic recovery. I think we see the light at the end of the tunnel, though we’ll still need to be careful even when every American is vaccinated. I am glad to see the bunting and ribbons around mailboxes. They signify growth and rebirth. They dovetail nicely with the Easter holiday, the most joyous holiday to Christians, one we still celebrate even as we have grown to be much more secular, at least on the Left.
Quakers don’t formally celebrate religious holidays, the theory being that no day is more holy or sacred than the other, but like with Christmas, we have fairly recently relaxed our strict traditions. I happen to celebrate Easter myself, even though in a perpetually ironic sense, this time of year is the height of tornado season down here. About thirty years ago, a Palm Sunday service received a direct hit, which destroyed the building, and took the life of the minister’s daughter. As we have experienced this past year, tragedy has been mixed with rebirth.
"For awhile, it makes you appreciate people more," she said. "I wish I could say that was still the case. But I am human. Of course, none of us want bad things to happen in our lives, but we live in a world that's broken. It's full of sin and selfishness. I don't think God caused it to happen. Did He have greater purposes to allow it to happen? I'm sure He did."
On Sunday, when members of the church gather for a special memorial service, Cronan and DeHaven plan to be there. Cronan will sing "Holy Ground," a song that has become special for church members in remembering the events of that day. She isn't necessarily looking forward to the service, Cronan said, for all the emotions, but she does long to see the people touched by it all.
"I just pray for sunshine," she said.
But I would rather focus on the positive, as I began this post.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” -2 Corinthians 5:17.