We have received recommendations in our state that mask mandates will soon be lifted – again. I have mixed feelings. I am a teacher and have spent my days directing discussions, talking, and encouraging, all while wearing a mask day after day. When students first returned from distance learning this past year, speaking with a mask on was challenging, and I often went home with a headache and a cough. But after about three months, I had adapted and could go the entire day without any issues. However, I always look forward to walking outside at the end of the school day, taking off my mask, and breathing deeply.

As I look ahead to lifting the mask mandate, I admit I am a bit anxious. I live in a community with low vaccination rates, so the masks have helped to keep me safe. About this same time last year, our state lifted the mask mandate in public places, except for schools, and it didn’t go well. Covid numbers soared, hospitals filled up, and we wore masks again in indoor settings within a month. But, I think this time will be different. The daily counts of Covid cases are going down, and I’ve read that the CDC is predicting that the pandemic is reaching an endemic stage.

In examining my anxiety about going without a mask, I am reminded of how habits form. Studies show different results, but generally, they report that habits form after twenty-one to sixty-six days of doing something consistently. When this recent mask mandate lifts, we will have been wearing them for about seven hundred and thirty days, and that is some serious habit-forming time! I look at the past few years and see the stress that crowded every mask-covered day. Wearing a mask is my safety net and security to help me stay well to continue teaching. 

In my classes each year, I talk about people who lived through the depression and how it changed them because of the extreme situation they found themselves in. Now, as I look at living through a global pandemic, I can see that I have also been changed. Part of the poem “Fugue” by Amanda Gorman puts this idea into words:

This is edgeless doubt:

Every cough seemed catastrophe,

Every proximate person a potential peril.

We mapped each sneeze and sniffle,

Certain the virus we had run away from

Was now running through us.

As I read her words, I recognize that I have changed through all of this. The doubt and uncertainty of every single situation I have faced the past few years have left me cautious and untrusting of people and most situations. And I admit, it will be difficult for me to change a habit after I have so diligently kept it for seven hundred and thirty days. But I will make an attempt. I am not ready to jump right in yet, and I will undoubtedly watch how it plays out for others before I join in this great unmasking. I will also try to trust again as I reintroduce my brilliant smile to the world.