Amplified Uncertainty

With the car all loaded up and ready to go, my mother and I posed for one last picture together before I embarked on a new chapter in my life. My mother tried to muster up a smile and wipe away the tears as my dad snapped the picture, but the emotion surrounding this day engulf her. Despite being in the midst of a pandemic, I had decided to attend university in the fall. However, pandemic aside, this day was already an emotional toll on my mother. I was the last of her children going off to college and unlike my siblings, I would not be a short hour-long car ride away. I had chosen to attend Northeastern University in Boston, a not-so-short fourteen-hour car ride away. Everything about this day was new territory for her—not having kids in the house for the first time and one of her children moving far away. And to only make it worse, I was leaving her in the middle of a pandemic. What this pandemic means to my mother is an added layer of anxiety or worry. My mother is very cautious about contracting the virus and above all, she worried about her loved ones contracting it. And now her youngest child left for college in a new state and new city unfamiliar to her, all the while a deadly virus was spreading across the country uncontrollably. The pandemic has taken the already stressful times in our lives and amplified them, adding a new layer of worry and uncertainty.

August 30, 2020

photograph

English Home & Family Life

English Education--Universities

English Emotion

mother

Boston

Northeastern University

anxiety

uncertainty

Massachusetts

Motherhood

11/12/2020

11/12/2020

11/19/2020

08/30/2020