Phase out
Two years ago, the pandemic started for me in Hawaii. Like Joan Didion's essay about staying at the Royal Hawaiian to repair her marriage right before a tsunami grounded in the 1970s, fifty years later, I was staying at the same pink hotel in the shadow of a disaster--except this time listening to news reports about the virus on the mainland, wondering what the world would look like when the wave crashed on shore. I was dating L at the time, a vegan who didn't drink or smoke. I remember sitting in a rocking-chair on the veranda, listening to tropical birds and watching the turquoise water, thinking about how I would forever remember that moment but not yet knowing how or why. There were no masks yet, no lockdowns, no "phases" or rules or mandates or conspiracy theories, and we weren't even close to a vaccine.
It was in Hawaii that I got the email message from the tech company I work at saying we should all start working remotely from home. Today, on an all-hands Zoom meeting (which is now a thing), the company announced that all the offices were open again, no masks required. Last week, the CDC announced masks are no longer required for 70% of the population. The state I live in will stop requiring masks and proof of vaccination indoors later next week.
Two years have passed, and Joan Didion died two months ago.
We've been through an insurrection, a racial justice uprising, environmental disasters spanning unprecedented wildfires to locust swarms, several waves of covid variants, a labor shortage, a homelessness crisis, the "great resignation", now the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and hearing about all the millions of radical life changes so many of us have had in this time. (I wonder if two years always contained so much but went unnoticed without a frame? Don't children also bend time like this? Or were these two years a kind of portal, compressing experience into a dense layer like coal or diamonds?)
For me, the book-end was leaving the United States again and being on a beach. This time, in Mexico for a friend's 50th birthday in February, the view of the ocean looked surprisingly the same as it did two years ago. I don't know what I was expecting. But somehow everything was still completely different. Nothing had changed, except us.
These past two years have probably saved me, giving me the time and peace and space to recover my creativity and make true connections. I have gone on so many amazing walks with so many amazing friends. I somehow randomly have a book deal to write and illustrate a book about trees. I am no longer dating a vegan I don't like that much. And I am no longer using The Ex as a trap-door. (He has a 1-year old now, and I have finally accepted that I've probably always been ambivalent about bringing new humans into this world--and maybe not having kids is the "right" choice I've felt so much social pressure to never admit.) Then, when I least expected it, I met T... not online, but through friends. I guess we had already met 20 years ago when he was dating a friend, but I don't remember (he does). And I actually like him and think he's really cool, and I've never made myself vulnerable enough to say that.
I will turn 43 years old in one month. It will be my first birthday in my 40s that I will be able to celebrate with others.
It was in Hawaii that I got the email message from the tech company I work at saying we should all start working remotely from home. Today, on an all-hands Zoom meeting (which is now a thing), the company announced that all the offices were open again, no masks required. Last week, the CDC announced masks are no longer required for 70% of the population. The state I live in will stop requiring masks and proof of vaccination indoors later next week.
Two years have passed, and Joan Didion died two months ago.
We've been through an insurrection, a racial justice uprising, environmental disasters spanning unprecedented wildfires to locust swarms, several waves of covid variants, a labor shortage, a homelessness crisis, the "great resignation", now the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and hearing about all the millions of radical life changes so many of us have had in this time. (I wonder if two years always contained so much but went unnoticed without a frame? Don't children also bend time like this? Or were these two years a kind of portal, compressing experience into a dense layer like coal or diamonds?)
For me, the book-end was leaving the United States again and being on a beach. This time, in Mexico for a friend's 50th birthday in February, the view of the ocean looked surprisingly the same as it did two years ago. I don't know what I was expecting. But somehow everything was still completely different. Nothing had changed, except us.
These past two years have probably saved me, giving me the time and peace and space to recover my creativity and make true connections. I have gone on so many amazing walks with so many amazing friends. I somehow randomly have a book deal to write and illustrate a book about trees. I am no longer dating a vegan I don't like that much. And I am no longer using The Ex as a trap-door. (He has a 1-year old now, and I have finally accepted that I've probably always been ambivalent about bringing new humans into this world--and maybe not having kids is the "right" choice I've felt so much social pressure to never admit.) Then, when I least expected it, I met T... not online, but through friends. I guess we had already met 20 years ago when he was dating a friend, but I don't remember (he does). And I actually like him and think he's really cool, and I've never made myself vulnerable enough to say that.
I will turn 43 years old in one month. It will be my first birthday in my 40s that I will be able to celebrate with others.