The four-letter word that describes 2020
There are a number of four-letter words that can be used to describe 2020. Some of the most apt among them are too inappropriate to print here.
Other four-letter words have been uttered more this year than any other. Words like mask. Some of these words are best combined in pairs, like wash hands or stay home. These simple combinations of letters seem fairly innocuous at first glance, but they bring to mind masked children in school yards, shuttered businesses, lonely living rooms, overfull hospitals, and empty town squares. Anyone who has lived through 2020 has a solemn appreciation of these words that evoke the heaviness of this past year.
Then there are quartets of letters, like the silly word zoom, which surely have crossed our collective lips more than ever before. Zoom call, zoom wedding, zoom funeral, zoom date, zoom yoga, zoom dinner, zoom school, zoom birthday. Say it enough times, and it starts to sound strange. As strange as the reality of engaging in our small and large moments, not in person, but rather with just the upper part of our torsos and faces peering into a small screen with a slight delay. And of course, there is the rite of passage of every zoom call, when a chorus of voices reminds the speaker with that other four-letter word, “You’re on MUTE.”
Who among us hasn’t said miss wistfully and longingly, in relation to all sorts of relics from the “before” world? We miss community, we miss celebrations, we miss the din of a restaurant, we miss unproductive workplace banter, we miss loved ones, we miss milestones, we miss travel, we miss our favourite local businesses. We miss the separation of home from everything else. We miss feeling safer than we do now, we miss hugging people as a greeting, and we miss planning for the future. “I miss you,” we say to our nearest and dearest, staring into a device while sitting alone at the kitchen table.
As this infamous year drags to a close, though, there is one four-letter word that sums up the year better than any other. That word is care. Both the noun, as in “we all have a role to play in the care of the most vulnerable among us”, and the verb, as in “we care about the health of our community”. There is also the phrase take care that we say with love, more thoughtfully this year than we did in the past.
Care was the hallmark of this year. Caremongering groups sprung up and quickly made global headlines, as communities came together to help their most vulnerable neighbours. Through errands, sharing, and donations, these caring people responded to crisis with compassion, and weaved a web of care in their own local communities. Online, individuals widely used the care react function which Facebook rolled out in response to the pandemic. How beloved this emoji became is, of course, less a reflection on that company and more on the millions of human beings who felt moved to show care for the people behind the posts. Essential workers — as well as caretakers like nurses, doctors, teachers, and those working in long-term care facilities — took great personal risk to care for us all when we needed it most.
People donated money to those who lost jobs, picked up groceries for people in quarantine, rallied to support local businesses struggling to make rent, organized group video calls to replace cancelled celebrations, listened to faraway family members on the days when it was too much to bear, and nurtured the members of their household who came down with the virus. Everyone muddled through as best we could, and responded to a seemingly endless emergency with care for one another. Every single day, care took place and continues to occur unabated, often unseen outside of the walls of our homes and the squares of our screens.
To care meant to survive. The year 2020 brought out in us our caring nature, with countless individual acts of care adding up to create a collective culture of caretaking.
As we look ahead to 2021, exhausted and trepidatious, we very well may start using “2020” itself as a four-letter word. We already look at a mishap and say, “That is so 2020”. But, hopefully, we will stop cussing long enough to calm and ready ourselves for whatever we face next year. Most likely, as our families and communities navigate unknown storms ahead, we will be called on countless times to take and give care.
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Alice Irene Whittaker is a writer and a leader in environmental communications, who has been published in national and international publications. She lives in a cabin in the woods in Québec, Canada.
