Snapshots

This morning, while I ate two pieces of cinnamon toast, the same comforting breakfast my mother always made when I was a kid and under the weather, I read on Facebook about a nutritionist who says we all need to be consuming less calories because we’re getting less exercise.

This is of course factually true, but some people really know how to ruin the party, don’t they?

In the future — there will be one, no matter how unimaginable that seems right now— we’ll talk not about the Freshman 15, but the Covid 15.  In the future, men may ask each other did you grow a Corona beard?  and women, what day of the Quarantine did you  stop wearing your bra? In the future, everyone may ask each other what day did you stop changing from your nighttime to your daytime pajamas? In the future, there will be — we all know there will — Corona Babies. As well Corona Love Affairs, begun virtually, and Corona Divorces.

This morning, I woke with a jolt, thinking that I’d forgotten to get the girls up for school in time.  Then I remembered: school is little more than hundred steps from the table where they eat their breakfast, and besides, they can attend it in their pajamas.  As I fell back into that musing half-life between awake and asleep, my mind started wandering until the image of myself sitting on a park bench here in Madrid popped into my mind.  I realized a friend was sitting there, on the next  bench further down the sidewalk.  Only ten feet away!  What luck!  The joyful surprised recognition I felt in that moment woke me all the way up.

We humans are such sociable creatures. Maybe we’ve forgotten that, in these past few years of division and discord.  This morning, I’m holding onto the thought that some good might come from this strange slow nerve-wracking time, as we all navigate being alone, together.