Happy Panaversary
Remembering the chunk of days that encompasses all our private anniversaries
For some people, it was March 11, the date the WHO described the novel coronavirus known as Covid-19 as a pandemic. Also it is the date we learned that beloved actors Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson had caught the disease. For others, their anniversary might be the last day they were at work, often March 13, or the first true “day off” when they would normally have been at work, March 15. Or for some, some day in February, when the deaths began in the US. My panaversary is March 14.
Unlike 9/11, a day that began at 8:46am Eastern time for every living witness, the Covid 19 pandemic began on different days and in different ways. Also unlike 9/11, where the direct shared trauma was mostly isolated to New York, DC, and Pennsylvania, Covid’s collective trauma is ongoing, near-universal, and in every cranny of the globe.
Over the past year I have experienced entirely new anxieties, new emotions, new depths of loneliness, and confronted facets of my psyche that had been backburnered for more pressing concerns for years. I also continually feel my immense good fortune at not being a frontline essential worker or financially dependent on one; that I was physically, fiscally, and technologically able to work from home, and that it actually improved my work life immensely. I have not yet suffered from…
