The summer before our discontent

My son was on a mission to find the perfect back-to-school backpack, and he was willing to comb through countless stores, be they outlet or otherwise, to find it. He finally found what he was looking for in the corner of a boutique, the name of which we couldn't pronounce despite ample force-smiled pronunciations from the sales clerk.

But one thing was clear: this bag was exactly the thing a newly minted ninth-grader needed for the year ahead. 

It wasn't flashy -- just a slim rectangle constructed of heavy-duty black canvas with brown leather accents that could be expanded twice its width by one extra track of zipper -- but it was expensive.

His father wasn't convinced that it would be big enough to tote books and binders back and forth and suggested we keep looking. 

But it was those brown leather accents - and my insistence that not all heavy textbooks need to make a daily commute - that sold it.

I wasn't quite prepared for the sight of him: all stretched out by an abrupt summer growth spurt, ready, willing, and able to do whatever it takes to get back to school.

He was finally a big kid.

And as my eyes welled with tears at the presence of my last-born child, who stood before me with a brand new backpack as if this were just another summer day before school starts.  

If his sly grin and bedraggled hair weren't enough to show me the time for grieving had passed, his misaligned socks and properly-fitted mask let me believe that we have the ability (and the peer pressure) needed to soldier on.

As we look forward to another school year in pandemic land, I want to wish us all the fortitude to withstand the shrieks and rantings of a few angry voices.

We've heard you rage, bare-faced, into the microphones insisting you will not be inoculated by common sense; nor masked by common decency; nor silenced by common knowledge. 

We know no experience from your many years upon this earth can dissuade you from blindly following your terrible intuition to its final resting place. 

But restrictions can save the rest of us.

Don't want to get vaccinated? That's fine but you won't be able to get on a plane. Or go to a restaurant. In time, there may not be room for you at the hospital.

Don't want to wear a mask? Sure, you still have that choice, but you won't be allowed into school. Or the library or your doctor's office. 

Because we do still hold some truths to be self-evident: That vaccines are still our best hope for an end to this suffering and that mask-wearing, like its predecessor, hand-washing, is an effective way to minimize the spread of infection. 

We know that when ICUs are filled with COVID patients, there's little room for heart patients, or cancer patients, or any other emergencies.

We know that children with curable diseases will be put at greater risk of death. 

And we know that our healthcare system is already strained beyond a sustainable capacity. 

At some point ... this dam protecting us will break where it has not been maintained and the floodwaters may drown us all. 

We need to use the only tools we have in our proverbial backpacks. Get vaccinated. Wear your mask. 

It is the very least thing we can do to protect each other.