I had my first baby within two months of moving to Cambridge. We barely knew anyone. One crisp October night, when my son was just a few days old, a family from our new ward brought us a meal I will never forget. It was still warm: chicken pot pie and peach cobbler. We invited them into our home, a one-bedroom apartment with a living room that moonlighted as a dining area. Elbow-to-elbow at our shabby Craigslist dining room table, we shared a meal together, talking late into the night as I nursed my son. In those first disorienting days of being a new mother, a dinner with friends inside our home felt like a lifeline to the outside world. When I was too weak to venture out to find a good meal and adult conversation, this family brought it into my home.
I often think about how the early days of this pandemic were a little like the first days in a newborn’s life: the outside world feels too threatening, the fragile mother stays sequestered in her home. Instead, the world comes to her: visitors sit on her bed, bring meals, tidy up the house, hold the baby—anything to help. I remember that first week of motherhood another friend came over and after watching me yawn repeatedly, offered to hold my son while I took a nap in the other room. Each of these visits buoyed me up for days. In those moments of early motherhood, home wasn’t just a place I retreated to after living life. It was a place where life happened. The home became an intimate and sacred space for communing not only with my husband and my child, but those outside who ventured on the inside to help.
During this pandemic, our home—like all homes—became a potential breeding ground for COVID-19, interrupting these important ties with the outside world. As our homes became off-limits to anyone but our families and roommates, I realized that what I had missed most about being with people I loved happened in a home: late-night conversations with a few friends who lingered after a party, book club, and caring for each other when home was the safest place to be. During those gatherings, we talked about things that mattered to us and somehow left closer than we had been before.
We did what we could to recreate those intimate experiences. Instead of visiting friends in their living rooms, we met in our backyards and parks. I’ve visited so many homes through video. One time, on a Zoom call, my friends and I discussed the art that made it into the frame on each other’s screen. We have dropped off cookies, bread and books for each other—the bits of home we could share at a distance. In these gifts were reminders that we hadn’t forgotten each other and held out hope for rich experiences ahead.
During quarantine, one of my close friends had a baby. I wanted to care for her much like the women in my church did for me: fold her laundry, do her dishes, coo at her baby while she took a moment to herself. But instead, my caring had to end at her doorstep: I dropped off toilet paper, then brought flowers and a gift. Once, we talked awkwardly across the chasm of a stairwell.
When she recovered enough to leave her bed, it wasn’t safe to visit each other’s homes. So we opted for the next best thing. We sat on the grass in her backyard six feet apart, her baby curled up tightly on her chest. I craned my neck to take a look at the baby’s face, attempting to study his features. There he was, pure perfection: a rosy cheek, a button nose, a tiny labyrinth of his ear. I yearned to hold him to get a better view. But it’s only months later we were no longer scared to touch each other. By then, the baby boy did not need holding anymore.
Mariya Manzhos is a writer based in Somerville, Massachusetts.
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