A little leeway is harder than none

Why, oh, why are these doctors making such a big deal about our matriculants going on Rage at the end of the year? I mean, so many of us have been vaccinated, and it’s hardly going to be an action replay of last year…

Okay, that’s not how I feel at all, but I imagine there are some who do feel this way.

The truth is, we have no way of knowing that Rage 2021 won’t have the potential to be far worse than last year in terms of the spread of COVID-19. You see, we haven’t all been vaccinated, and being vaccinated doesn’t make us all safe.

We may well be in a different space to what we were this time last year, and Rage 2020 was the launch pad of the second wave of COVID-19 in South Africa. However, we don’t know what December 2021 will bring. That’s the crazy thing about this coronavirus, we simply cannot tell. Even the experts aren’t 100% sure what will happen and what will set off the fourth wave.

Yes, it’s damn frustrating! Yes, we all wish COVID-19 was behind us and we could regain a semblance of normality. But, that’s just it!

Right now, most of the adults I know have been ‘double vaxxed’ I was so excited to be vaccinated because I believed it would give me back some freedom. But has it?

I’m 100% sure that I’m safer from death and the intensive-care unit, but somehow it doesn’t mean we can let our hair down.

Here’s my confession: I celebrated my son’s Barmitzvah this past weekend. Yes, it was very low key and just immediate family, but COVID-19 protocols weren’t observed 100%.

I remember standing in shul watching my son begin singing his parsha, and I felt loving hands automatically reaching out for mine. I needed those hands. I needed the love and support, and I got it.

However, COVID-19 protocols don’t allow for loved ones who don’t live with you – who I have kept away from for a year and a half – to hold my hands and hug me. In that moment, I really understood how difficult it is to maintain COVID-19 protocols when we have all been vaccinated and are so tired of living in tiny bubbles.

I come from a loving and physically affectionate family – like so many Jewish families. We show our affection physically and verbally, and we rarely held back in the past. And this year and a half has been difficult.

But since March last year, we have been exemplary in following the protocols, so concerned were we about each other and making someone sick. But this weekend, it was a simcha, and it was so hard to reconcile the fact that although we had all been vaccinated, we still had to stay away from each other.

I certainly longed for and needed the hugs and love.

I do understand that we can perhaps let down our guard a little, but we still need to take care. However, to be honest, it’s sometimes tougher to let down your guard a little bit than not at all. As an adult who some may refer to as middle aged, that’s how I feel.

So, let’s move swiftly to the idea of Rage. Seventeen and 18-year-old teenagers are celebrating their freedom from school, exams, and their childhood. They are no longer school kids, but they aren’t yet adults.

Having recognised just how hard it is for me to hold back from affection as the mother of a Barmitzvah boy, I can only imagine the impossibility of expecting restraint from young adults or old teens. Surely, expecting them to show restraint is too much to expect.

So, you need to know that if you send your children to Rage, don’t expect them to hold back. It isn’t going to happen.

Don’t rely on the organisers of Rage – who promised to follow protocols last year – to restrain your children. They can’t. They are simply too few, and can’t be everywhere all the time. How can they even make promises? They shouldn’t.

So, if there is one super-spreader event at Rage, it can and will spread COVID-19 all over again. Will vaccines make the difference? All depends on how many have been vaccinated and what strain is on the go then.

So, I totally understand why GPs and other doctors are pleading with schools and parents not to send their matriculants to Rage.

As a parent, I also understand the need to give our children the gift of freedom – something they haven’t had even a semblance of for a long, long time, thanks to this horrid coronavirus. I understand wanting to allow them to enjoy time with their friends, to make new ones, and simply have the gift of pure, youthful fun.

We all had that in some form or another when we finished matric, but this is a different time. This is the time of a virus that knows no barriers.

So, sending your matriculant with their nearest and dearest friends to a flat on the coast would be preferable. Bring it down a dozen notches so that the threat of the virus is far less daunting.

In reality, we don’t have a choice. We aren’t being unkind by making plans for a different holiday (not Rage), we are being kind and thoughtful – not just for our children, but for everyone in the country.

Unfortunately, we need to live within the constraints of safety. I realise more than ever just how hard that is. I just want to hug so many people – but the time for that will come.

Hopefully, it will get easier and easier, and we will have more and more freedom. Until then, let’s try our best to bide the time it takes to be safe.

And if you do fall off the wagon of the protocols, as I did, dust yourself off and get back on again, hoping that the virus stays away from you and your loved ones.

G’Mar Gatima Tova and Shabbat Shalom!

Peta Krost Maunder

Editor

PS: We won’t be publishing the SA Jewish Report for the next two weeks because of the festivals. You will find us again on 7 October 2021.