Channeling my mom (but never her hair), I see reason for hope this fall: Kids' vaccines are coming

Last weekend, it was 3-year-old grandson Russell’s turn to press his hand into a shallow, leaf-shaped tray of wet cement. Twenty-four hours later, he walked alongside us as we ceremoniously carried his new masterpiece to the base of the dogwood tree we had planted soon after he was born.

This rite of passage would have gone without a hitch had Russell not strolled past his sister’s tree, also a dogwood. She is two years older, and that is why her tree is two years taller. This explanation failed to calm him.

“But look,” I said in my best Good Witch voice as I pointed to three red leaves just over his head, “only your tree knows it’s autumn.”

This did not inspire the intended response but I was happy, nonetheless. In that moment, I’d never felt more like my mother.

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Frozen hair, fall leaves and a memory

Janey Schultz loved autumn so much that in October 1978, she allowed me to stick a branch of fall foliage into her lacquered helmet of hair and then smiled for a photo. History was made.

My parents were visiting me at Kent State, where I was a journalism major and almost always armed with a 35 mm camera. This was their first visit to campus since the day they had deposited me at my dorm a year earlier. Dad waited to make the hour-long drive until the leaves were at high color because this was one of the things he always did for Mom.

Every autumn throughout my childhood, my parents crammed all of us kids into the family car for our annual trip across the state border into western Pennsylvania to “watch the colors.”

“Watch the colors do what?” my little brother asked, only once.

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To fully appreciate that moment in October 1978, you have to know the story of my mother’s hair.

Every week my mother returned from the salon and plastered her hair in enough Aqua Net to make her beehive, and later her curly cloud of puff, as impenetrable as a bank vault.

One summer Mom and I played on the same softball team (I don’t recommend this) and she became locally famous for sliding into home and, with a single uppercut, punching her beehive back to the top of her head. I became known as the player whose mother did this.

CONNIE SCHULTZ: Read more columns by the USA TODAY columnist

Nothing was allowed to penetrate Mom’s hair except her steel Afro pick and the occasional butterfly pins her hairdresser Gary inserted, but only in the spring. And yet, there she was, on that fateful day in October 1978, agreeing to let me jab that sprig of fall leaves into her hair and then smiling for the camera.

She did this over my father’s objections, which I now understand was probably the point. It remains one of my favorite photos of her.

Years after she was gone, I tried to duplicate that photo of Mom, but my tease-free hair was no match for the weight of tree bark. I looked like the neighbor lady who elicits nervous smiles of concern from passersby as they dial 911.

Signs of hope as we fall into fall?

Last year we had an autumn like no other because of this pandemic. After a brief and glorious dip in infections and deaths in early summer, the delta variant is now filing hospitals with mostly unvaccinated people. The U.S. death toll is again climbing; as of this week, the total is more than 680,000. Such a sad development, and for the most part, so avoidable.

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Still, as we embark on this second autumn of COVID-19, we have reason to be hopeful. In a recent interview with ABC’s The Week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, said that children from ages 5 to 11 will soon be eligible for the vaccine.

“Sometime in the next few weeks, as we get into October,” Fauci said, “we’ll be able to see the vaccines for children get enough data to be presented for safety and immunogenicity.”

Will this be in time for Halloween? We don’t know, but it makes me hopeful for the eventual return of hundreds of parents who drive into our patch of Cleveland to give their costumed children a night of safe fun.

Remember when the biggest crisis at Halloween was whether children who weren’t from your neighborhood should receive a single piece of your candy?

Boy, those were the days.

The leaves are starting to change here in northeast Ohio. I doubt I will ever look at a golden oak or a fiery red maple and not think of my mother. I am grateful for that.

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Fauci’s announcement also made me think of her. My mom was a nurse’s aide, and she would have been so excited to learn that younger children will soon be safe from COVID-19.

Our 13-year-old Clayton was the first of our eight grandchildren to be vaccinated. With this next round, four more will get the vaccine.

Once again, I’m thinking of you, Mom. Wish you were here for what is bound to be the most beautiful fall we’ve ever seen.

USA TODAY columnist Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize winner whose novel, “The Daughters of Erietown,” is a New York Times bestseller. You can reach her at CSchultz@usatoday.com or on Twitter: @ConnieSchultz

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: COVID vaccine for kids give cause for optimism this fall season