From my window

by Mercedes Moresco

Some vaccines are already being administered and, despite the doubts they still generate, we are supposed to see some changes.

Dawns

We have just said goodbye to a year that we will all remember, that will be written down in universal history. Each one will have to tell their own version, their own story. And they will all be true.
2021 dawns with hope. Some vaccines are already being administered and, despite the doubts they still generate, we are supposed to see some changes. And although the shadow of COVID does not go away, rather it mutates as its own genetics mutates, towards other similar and contagious viruses, the challenge this year will be to learn to live under these circumstances.
2020 had all of humanity in suspense, with fear, counting the infected and the dead, not of a city, nor of a country, of the entire world. And although the uncertainty is great, today we know much more about the virus than in March of last year. And that counts.
Of all the great people affected by the pandemic, I personally have had to be close to the children. Through online classes I was living with them day by day, week by week, the historic 2020. I could feel their confinement, their boredom, their desire to go out to play, to see their friends, their loneliness. Some more than others have expressed it in my classes, and I tried to do my best so that this passage was not so difficult.
Last week I did an activity with my students related to the farewell of the year. I proposed to write their wishes for next year, written in Spanish, of course.
"Let the COVID disappear", "see my friends", "visit my grandparents", and even "go back to school" were the most repeated wishes. Simple and straightforward, boys talk too. And it is on them that we must also focus this year. Do not forget that they have also been strongly affected by confinement and not being able to go to school.
My fourteen-year-old daughter Luz said goodbye to the year asking for “friends”, but “real friends”. And I am moved by his desire because it is closely related to his adolescence and how he has lived this pandemic. And I, his mother, I can do nothing to fulfill that wish.
I imagine that many other parents have gone through a similar experience this year and that is why I invite you to think together what other solutions we can devise so that our children can play with their friends again, without screens or mobile devices involved. That's my wish. Simple. And simple.