24 | November 2020
S
ome mornings the news is so bleak all I can do is read
headlines or Twitter, not full articles. Do you do this, too?
I hide under the covers and hope my remote-school-
ing girls won't come ask me for things, as I drink coffee
and scan news snippets on my phone, trying to muster up the
strength to approach another day of living at home with all-of-
my-family-members-all-the-time, dwindling work, fears about
the future, and general misery that COVID-required distance
means I'm maybe missing out on my parents' last viable years.
(A dear friend's father just died. I wasn't at the funeral.) Every
sentence I read jolts me: Systemic racism! Hours-long vot-
ing lines! Climate denier appointed to the Supreme Court!
Oh, the climate.
It's hard to choose one stressor over the other presently,
but the climate headlines are especially devastating. Part of our
extended family that lives in California narrowly missed losing
their house to wildfire. This article that links air pollution par-
ticles in young brains to Alzheimer's put me over the edge. (I
read that whole article, not just the headline; my beloved stepfather,
currently stranded COVID-alone in a nursing home, has dementia.)
My climate stress has everything to do with my kids' fu-
ture. My poor, cranky, lovable, wonderful children. I have long
worried about their climate burden. And now they're also
missing everything. My 7 year-old yearns to be closer than six
feet apart from her friends and would give anything for an
indoor play date. My 14 year-old is in knots after seeing on
Snap Chat that other people's parents allow her friends to hang
out mask-free and in packs!?! We don't because…science. Of
course, they should want these things. I want them for them,
too! I suspect I scroll headlines because I can't fix any of this.
Recently a tweet from the environmental journalist Amy
Westervelt at least made me laugh: "Woke up thinking "welp child-
hood had a good run." Too dark? Good morning, America!" Westervelt
has been refreshingly honest about juggling parenting and work. I
The Horror of Climate Anxiety By Alexandra Zissu
