Dear child,
Before a vaccine is developed against COVID-19, please know I wrote you this letter. Letters in the time of pandemic—that’s a thing, too!
Today, the disquiet lingered long after my favorite playlist. I did not like it.
I decided to watch Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 post-apocalyptic film Children of Men, a film where infertility threatened mankind with extinction. And then I realized that the premise might not be really because of some anatomical or biological or evolutionary reasons. Perhaps, it was because of man’s failure to find meaning in human connection that even conception became improbable.
I hated the reinforced idea of a dying world. I stopped halfway.
I started watering the plants in the garden—asking them questions, singing them songs. It’s hard to keep yourself busy these days. But I try.
Maybe months from now, you will see the world. And we will see you for the first time. I hope you could stay longer there, though. You have to know that you are in the safest place in the world right now—your mother’s womb.
I pray you don’t feel lonely there; that you learn about solitude; and that you don’t feel even lonelier when you get to meet the world. It’s a sad place out here right now. But it becomes bearable when we are able to find meaning in the little things that we do.
I know you will feel defeated upon breathing air from a world that’s barely alive. But I hope you forgive us.
And I hope, just like your Mom and I, you believe that everything will be okay. You believe in healing, in time, and life.
Always, all ways...
Dad
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Richard Olano is a 19-year-old writer and filmmaker deeply fascinated by the complexity and universality of love, life, longing, and leaving.
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Memento.
Stories and images in the time of COVID-19
An anthology of the struggles and hopes of Filipinos during the global health crisis of our time.