I was in our laundry room the other day, lost in a trance of boredom while I was doing a load bike, when a brilliant plot of yellow attracted my attention. It was the point of an old facial mask that had fallen into the area, apparently hidden for years under a basket of spare clothes.
Like the content of a time travel machine, this little artifact of domestic life around 2020 quickly brought me back.
With many other residents of Louisiana sailing in the days of locking the pandemic, our family used a lot of fabric masks while we ventured for the necessities, and keeping them clean has become a dark ritual. A dozen suspended from drying supports in the laundry room, their varied colors creating a macabre mobile which underlined the strangeness of the time.
Memories of other sinister oddities of these days came back when I fed a pack of sheets in the dryer. I remembered the bizarre minute when the delivery man brought our shopping every week, both dancing us in a shared gesture of social distancing.
I thought of our national obsession for the hand disinfectant, as well as the supply chain problems that have let proud proud proud blurred for the bathroom fabrics. To support our neighborhoods in neighborhoods while their closed dining rooms and they relied on the take -out orders to stay afloat, I would arrive in the parking lot of restaurants nearby and nodded to the waiting staff while they quickly passed the entrances wrapped through the car window.
The whole exchange seemed to be watching and vaguely illegal, such as buying diamonds on the black market.
This dark human comedy also came with a devastating loss. Millions of people died of an unpredictable virus, and the economic difficulties of locking were wide and deep. Students languished at home, and families and friends have endured separations that are too painful to quantify. We always discuss the best lesson if another pandemic presents itself to us.
Another living memory returned to me while our dryer fell and scolded during his working hour. It came to my mind that in the midst of locking, I had struck one of these good cosmic deals so common among the souls in distress.
“Make the pandemic disappear”, I promised at the time, “and I will not complain about anything.”
Recently, I attended six public rallies in a week. Last month, my wife and I danced at the marriage of a friend, savoring the joy of the crowd. Meanwhile, my promise a long time ago stopped taking my better days, as you can expect, was a bit of a bust.
I continue to chicate on the little things – the pinch in my shoulder, the squirrels in our flower bed, the lawn mower that has not yet started.
Even so, I try to tell myself that this anxious spring in the life of the country, whatever its challenges, was the kind of season that my pandemic could only hope.
Send an email to Danny Heitman to danny@dannyheitman.com.