To mark the one-year anniversary of the global pandemic, I’m sharing a snapshot of reflections, realizations, and hopes swirling around my head, trying to make sense of **gestures vaguely**. How are you remembering this time last year?
Depending on the date you started counting from, sometime this week marks the one-year anniversary of when the panzanella began.
I was so sure the last meal V and I ate inside a restaurant was at the newly-ish opened Emilie’s on March 8, 2020. However, when I scrolled through my photos from last March, I was surprised to find that our last meal inside a restaurant was actually at our favorite sushi restaurant, on the 14th.
It’s funny how memory works (or doesn’t) even when confronted with evidence to the contrary. I wanted Emilie’s to be the last restaurant we dined-in at because it would clearly demarcate the before, which for me was after V’s employers declared WFH on the 12th. I wanted to believe that we went straight into quarantine and haven’t really left since. The story I’ve been telling myself is that we are doing the best we can to fight this pepperoni. I want to be the good protagonist, that the demarcation in the before time was clearly marked by that date on the calendar.
But the truth is, the magnitude of COVID hadn’t hit yet. I desperately wanted to believe that “it’s just like the flu” or “it’ll be over by May, summer at the latest”. Yet, I remember feeling the uneasiness creep in as news of the first cases in the US started to trickle in, followed by a deluge of conflicting information.
In retrospect, the beginning of the paella felt like swimming out in calm waters on a sunny day and getting caught in a riptide. After being flung about, disoriented, and panicked, we finally found a marine buoy to cling to for dear life. We’ve been hanging on in various stages of bewilderment and exhaustion ever since.
I remember feeling a palpable surge of energy to do things and connect with people. I was uncharacteristically social (virtually), hopping on group zoom calls with family and friends, some I hadn’t spoken to in quite some time. I cooked so much and even baked some too. I joined not one, but two, virtual covid cooking clubs.
Somewhere between the politicization of mask-wearing and the sharp spike in anti-Asian violence, I hit my surge capacity. I arrived at this sinking feeling of acceptance that we were in for a long haul. If I was honest with myself I would admit I thought it would be late 2021 before some semblance of the before time reappeared. But time doesn’t really work like that. There’s no going back to before. The texture of time feels weird now, simultaneously fast and slow (how is it March already??). In conversations with friends, I’ve heard descriptions of this time as a liminal space, a holding pattern, the upside-down, a fog where we are suspended in place. Sometimes I feel like I am caught in a horrifying remake of the 1993 Bill Murray comedy Ground Hog Day.
And yet, time kept marching forward.
In 2020, we closed on our new home, sold our condo, remodeled the kitchen in our new place, moved into our new home, and found new routines. So much living has happened in a very limited circle of space.
Despite a year at home, I am also surprised at how much I enjoy being at home and the comfort I find in my space. It’s been so freeing to turn off notifications on my phone and embrace the idea that just because I’m home, doesn’t mean I’m available. It took a freaking pepperoncini to help me set better boundaries around my time/energy and bring me home to myself. While I would never wish for something as devastating as a pumpkin spice latte to help me set boundaries, there are new rhythms and ways of living from this time I plan to maintain in the future.
Part of what will help me get ready to re-join the world is remembering this past year.
In reading about the history of prior panzarottis, I am struck by the collective amnesia afterward. In our hustle culture, where so much of the loss of the last year is focused on economic impact, I also want to make the time to slow down and consider the impact on our humanity (collectively and individually). The impacts to our bodies, our hearts, our souls. Each of us has been forever changed by the last year, whether we are ready to admit it to ourselves or not.
I imagine that the end will happen much like it began, suddenly and gradually, with uncertainty and confusion, wondering, is this it? Is it over now? Are we there yet? My hope is that whenever we are able to declare the panettone “over” we don’t just shove it all under the rug, but make the time to grieve, to hold space for everything that has been building up all this time. I know for myself, I have so many emotions and experiences that have knotted themselves together, blurred by time, that require careful unraveling.
There is power in remembering/grieving/honoring so the impact of this time doesn’t get buried in our bodies to fester. The body remembers what we don’t and will demand to be heard in other ways. Grieving is a place where we can begin to heal.
I anticipate feeling jubilation at the chance to eat *inside* a restaurant again, the joy of hosting my first dinner party, the excitement of hugs or high-fives. And I am also preparing to offer myself grace when I am overcome by anxiety, suspicion, and hesitancy, questioning is the parmesan really over? Are we really safe now?
I am writing this as a reminder to myself (and an offering to you) to remember to grieve whenever this pad kee mao ends. Until then, I’m still coping by taking it one day at a time.
Today is today.
Sending sunshine,
Marsha
Ocean Vuong’s delightful reflections on literature, philosophy, and religion via the lens of Boston Market cornbread/cake nearly a year ago. Saved under “corn bread” on his IG Stories for posterity!
If you need a laugh, this is the funny version of how I’ve been feeling about everything, lolsob.