Thirty-three books and counting
I just counted. On the three chairside tables and freestanding CD cabinet in my living room, I have 33 books stacked up, each with a random nibble read from them, each quietly awaiting further attention and the opportunity to join dozens of others already perused and digested jamming the bookcases and overflowing onto the adjacent floor. None of them, I might mention, were in my house one short year ago.
No, that’s hardly right. Those stacks of books are as much a legacy of the pandemic as the two inches plus my personal COVID-twenty has added to my pants’ size. Looking back at living through it, the last year has been anything but short.
A year ago the world changed. The NBA cancelled its season and all the March Madness bracket picks were null and void. Tons of corned beef and cabbage went unsold and uneaten as St. Patrick’s Day festivities were canceled and countless kegs of green beer were allowed to go skunk waiting for the pubs’ next opening day.
All but overnight we rediscovered our kitchens and imposed household rationing on toilet paper and baby wipes. We peered out our windows, looked out from our porches, searching for the virus that, of course, we couldn’t see. The world went eerily quiet. We didn’t know for how long.
At the time, we really had no idea. The president promised packed churches for Easter, but the only crowds at Eastertide were at the ER and Intensive Care. We hunkered down. There were no parades on Memorial Day, no fireworks for the Fourth. The state fair was cancelled and Minnesota went into Pronto Pup withdrawal, missing Sweet Martha and deep fried Twinkies on a stick. We had a single-serve Thanksgiving, a carol-less Christmas, and when they dropped the ball on New Year’s Eve nobody came.
People got sick and more than a half-million of us died.
Pretending didn’t make it go away, so we learned to spot each other’s faces from the cheekbones up and half a dozen feet away. In time, we adjusted … sort of. Events and relationships became virtual – mediated by Zoom, Facebook or whatever other digital genie that offered its services. We stayed in touch -- tenuously at times, other times, not at all – and carried on.
But it was wearying. Our spirits suffered. We all needed a shot in the arm.
And now we’re getting it. By the millions. Never has the prospect of a Fourth of July potluck and back-to-school shopping ever sounded so good.
But our world has changed. And we’ve changed with it. We’ve learned things … like how I can buy books a lot faster than I can read them – even when under orders to stay at home.
By working from home we’ve learned that going to the office was overrated, until you get the urge to goof off and shoot the bull in the break room. On the other hand, the fact that friends and family had no option but to go to where the work had to be done – to stock the shelves, to care for the sick, to clear the streets and deliver the mail -- was a reminder that the really important people in our communities are the people who do real stuff – with their hands, with their bodies, as well as their minds, and we owe them both our respect and a living wage.
And we’ve learned how important we are to each other. How important it is just to hang out and party. We missed the crowds, missed the excitement, the amorphous feeling of “us-ness” that permeates a packed stadium and moves with each brushed shoulder through a likeminded throng. We missed friends and family to be sure, but even more so we missed the random encounter with the individuals we know for a moment then vanish forever from our lives, but leave us richer and wiser for it all. We miss the sound and smell of each other; the exchanged smiles; the petty annoyance; that secret smug feeling that comes from knowing you’d never dress like that out where anyone could see you.
It's been a long year. We’ve missed each other. Hopefully, we can all be back soon.