COVID-19: What we have lost — and gained
Every day, the pandemic brings news of death. We are reminded of the loss of life, which is most heartbreaking, but there is another kind of loss, too, mounting and stinging: the loss of life as we lived it.
Three months into quarantine, we do not know the full measure of our loss. But as the economy craters, the debt mounts and businesses fail, it is easy to imagine.
Shopping will change. In the United States, for example, J. Crew has declared bankruptcy. A decade or so ago, J. Crew was the icon of American casual chic. Michelle Obama proudly wore its clothes as a national brand, always inventive, stylish and affordable.
Cotton cardigans, khaki chinos, well-cut woollen suits, patterned silk ties. Linen and seersucker. It’s always a small pleasure to see the season’s new line. Its stores remain open, for now.
The Gap, Jcpenney, Neiman Marcus are closing or ailing. So is Macy’s, the venerable department store. Like all stores, it’s fighting back.
When I approach the menswear section at the flagship Macy’s in Washington, my favourite sales clerk greets me warmly; even he hasn’t seen me in months. From behind the counter he smiles mischievously and produces a sport jacket on a hanger he’s been saving just for me. He offers it at a deep discount, of course. The American department store is now the Moroccan souk.
In Canada, Simons and
The Bay may be casualties of COVID -19. Simons, which began in Quebec City in 1840, has flair in fashion and embraces sustainable materials. The Bay has originality and history, too. This year, celebrating its 350th anniversary, it is reviving the patterns and colours of its celebrated Hudson’s Bay point blankets, the ornament of the Canadian cottage.
Are those things gone? Killed by online shopping and this newest scourge? We hope not.
Like all things that we cherished, we mourn these shops, as we do other things of childhood: Chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles at Woolworth’s; penny candy at Black and White and
Old World mom-and-pop stores everywhere; 28 flavours of ice cream at Howard Johnson’s. Movie houses with names like the Capitol, the Palace, the Egyptian.
All are gone, or going, in trouble even before the contagion threatens to take them down. What’s next? Paying with cash?
Independent restaurants? Many will not make it (though chains such as St-hubert will survive, its roasted chicken and traditional coleslaw canonized in our culinary cathedral).
So, we mourn what we have lost — or will lose. But what have we gained, or regained?
We have a new appreciation of the telephone. Yes, yes, cellphones long ago changed our lives, offering mobility and convenience. But we lost conversations undisrupted by dropped signals and static.
In quarantine, many have returned to the house phone, calling landline to landline, the connection often crystalline, as if you’re next door. Zoom is a marvel but it is erratic and exhausting. The telephone — even the word sounds archaic — is not.
Drive-in movies are returning. The new attraction is the old one: sitting in your car, with refreshments and pyjama-clad
children, isolated beyond the reach of COVID-19. It is the next best thing to cinemas, which may reopen with half the seats — or may not.
There is new interest in cycling, which has never been as popular in North America as in Europe. (In Denmark, which does everything right, half of Danes get around on two wheels.)
People want bikes to go to work and avoid public transit. Or for exercise. There is a run on bikes in New York and other big U.S. cities.
We thought we were done with drive-in movies, telephones and bicycles. Milk men, too, who have had a revival. Apparently we are not. Now, with new feeling, we are rediscovering baking, gardening, even reading real books in reaction to screens. This is something to cheer.
We have lost so many and so much to the virus. Yet we crave the joys of life we had, and we are finding ways to revive them. Cohen is a journalist, professor and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.