On the Pandemic

March 24, 2023

When I found out that the San Diego Union Tribune wanted to profile me about the pandemic and how I've attempted to tip-toe out of it, the photographer asked where we might take a photo. For me, the answer was natural: the Big Fig Tree, as Devan calls it to this day.

Balboa Park is steps away from where we live, it's hallowed ground where my shoes touch just about daily, it's where Shannon and I got married, and it's where I now have the privilege of working with the San Diego Youth Symphony.

But this particular tree has special meaning. Some might know that in the early months of the pandemic I threw my whole self into being Devan's preschool teacher. Lesson plans were made daily; lesson plans were abandoned just about daily. I looked to fellow parents in the same boat for empathy, at teachers who dedicate their lives to this with admiration, and, of course, I looked at my then-two-year old son with a sense of love, with duty, with a sense of please let this pandemic be over soon. But also, please let it stay this way forever.

But the Big Fig Tree, to this day, is my pandemic relic, a place where he and I would spend hours and hours each week doing the things that toddlers make believe: cooking, gardening, the collecting of weeds, the squishing of figs. It was where an occasional glance at the watch to see that what felt like an hour had only been ten minutes. And yet the simultaneous feeling that those ten minutes were all that mattered. The Big Fig Tree was our classroom, a spaceship, a firetruck. It was our recess, a place to lower our masks, a place to breathe.

I walk by it daily, often on my way home from rehearsal with my students, and now this tree is a place that reminds me of the diligence of parenting and the joys of teaching.

If you've read the profile, you'll see some familiar faces in there: yes, Devan, but also Shannon (our pandemic breadwinning superhero), and of course our little Veda, who wasn't yet born when this tree took on such an important daily ritual in our lives. Sometimes I worry I am not giving her the time I once had with Devan (will she hold that against me when she becomes a teenager??). And yet, how many 2 year olds can say they've been in the newspaper, conducting the Imperial March with a stick?

Sameer Patel