Little Juliette Berkhemer is just a few months away from discovering the truth about her grandparents – they don’t live on her mother’s cell phone.
And for that, Juliette, a 14-month-old from Jersey City, New Jersey, can thank the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which on Monday gave grandparents who have already been vaccinated against Covid-19 the green light to meeting with loved ones that they had to avoid because of the pandemic.
For almost as long as Juliette lived, her only contact with her grandmother and grandfather in Houston was in FaceTime chats, said her mother, Becca Hoffman.
“She is so excited when they call,” said Hoffman. “She wants to pick up the phone and chatter. She was only a few months old when my parents saw her, and then the pandemic happened. So that’s how Juliette knows them, just over the phone.”
The excited grandmother Renee Hoffman said that Juliette was a newborn when he saw her – and her grandson, Vincent, now 7 – in January 2020.
“I thought I would see them again soon, and then Covid showed up,” said Hoffman, 60.
Now, the Hoffmans are conspiring to fly back to New Jersey as soon as possible.
“Vincent already knows that we hope to go, but Juliette does not,” said Renee Hoffman. “She will be very surprised. She thinks we live on FaceTime on the phone.”
There are legions of older Americans like the Hoffmans who, for fear of contracting Covid-19, were forced for more than a year to go without hugs, without kisses, from their children and grandchildren.
The CDC recognized pain in its first federal public health guideline on how people who received both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine can return to some appearance of normal life.
“For example,” wrote the CDC, “fully vaccinated grandparents can visit indoor places with their unvaccinated healthy daughter and healthy children without wearing masks or physical distance, as long as none of the unvaccinated family members are at risk of COVID- 19 serious. “
These were words that Renee Hoffman feared he would never hear.
“It’s been 13 months, 13 months too long,” she said. “It has been very difficult.”
Becca Hoffman said she was feeling very stressed when her parents visited her in January 2020, in the dead of winter.
“I felt like I didn’t like it enough,” she said. “But I figured that in a few months or so we would see them again soon.”
Renee Hoffman said that when the pandemic struck, she and her husband, Ted, were spending a lot of time with their other grandson, Aiden, who is now 6 and lives with his parents about an hour away in Conroe, Texas.
“I was taking care of him long before the pandemic,” she said. “The last time we saw him in person was on February 27, 2020.”
While Texas, like the rest of the country, began to impose restrictions, Republican Governor Greg Abbott soon suspended them to get the economy going again, and he did not impose a mask mandate until July, when Covid-19’s number of cases started to fire. the state. He dismissed the mandate this month, ignoring the CDC’s recommendations.
Renee Hoffman said that she and her husband decided early on to listen to medical experts instead of the governor and that they have been diligent in wearing masks.
“I have to say that I started wearing a mask right away and I didn’t get sick at all,” she said. “The same goes for my husband. He has heart disease and needs a pacemaker, but that was postponed because his doctor said it is still not safe for him to be in a hospital.”
Still, said Renee Hoffman, they felt like exceptions to the rule and watched with dismay that many people around them did not wear masks and seemed disinterested in social detachment. Other families, she said, were meeting despite the CDC’s warnings, and she acknowledged that it tested her resolve.
“The wait and not being able to see my children, to see my grandchildren, was starting to affect me,” she said. “I was getting to the point where I thought I didn’t care if I got sick. I have to see my kids.”
Therefore, the Hoffmans were ecstatic when the country received news in December that vaccines against Covid-19 were on their way.
“Last Friday, we received our first dose of Moderna and our second dose on April 2,” said Renee Hoffman. “Our goal is to see Aiden on my husband’s birthday in June.”
And then, at some point, he will go to New Jersey to see Vincent and Juliette, she said.
“Oh my God, we are so excited and so thankful, thankful that vaccines are available,” she said.
With a voice choked with emotion, she said that she had been thinking about scenarios of reunion with her children and grandchildren for months and that now that suddenly they seem possible, she can feel the emotion growing.
“I missed them so much,” she said.
In Jersey City, Becca Hoffman said she is also excited to be reuniting with her parents. But the day-to-day reality of living in a cramped apartment with her husband and two children makes her look at real estate listings in the suburbs of New Jersey, and having to teach her son home lessons doesn’t give her much of an opportunity to leave. her imagination wanders.
And now, she doesn’t dare fly anywhere with Juliette – and not just because of the Covid-19 threat. “She’s a hot little girl,” said Becca Hoffman with a laugh.
So, in her mind, she said, it is summer when her parents return to Jersey City.
“I have a vision of the two of us crossing the river in Central Park,” she said. “I would love to have you here.”