I’ll decide when to step outside
You won’t find Judith Timson on any patios just yet.
“It is easier to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends.”
— American writer Joan Didion
Forgive me, patio-frenzied Torontonians gratefully gulping cool beverages, soft summer air and most of all the sweet heady delights of socializing with someone who doesn’t care if you pick up your socks, I’m still figuring out, whatever officially designated “phase” we’re finally in, whether it’s pandemically safe for me to come out of my hidey hole — literally and psychologically.
My big fear is — having been so responsible, so risk averse, and so overly cautious, known to my husband and not always in a nice way as “Little Ms. Viral Police” — that I will miss the memo and stay locked inside my house and garden forever. Like one of those soldiers from a distant war who stumbles, in torn and faded fatigues, out of the jungle only to be told “What war? That war has been over for years.” Who knew?
I’m on to more significant questions. Who were we then? Who are we now?
We can ask ourselves that without fear of self-indulgence or neurosis as we figure out the way forward — financially, emotionally, physically — that best suits or supports us.
That query applies so poignantly to these past four challenging months as — alarmed, chastened or disbelieving — we heeded the stern call of sometimes confusing public health officials and often annoying political leaders to go home and stay there, in an attempt to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It appears in this great country, despite blunders and delays, and unlike our desperate neighbours to the south, we’ve succeeded in doing just that: co-operating when we could, pulling together and emerging, if not to a crowded patio bar (you won’t catch me there yet even though I live near restaurant patio heaven), but into a summer — or a summer lull as some call it; better than it could have been, but still fraught with personal risk management and difficult choices.
We’re talking only four months of a completely altered reality! And yet despite that brevity, I don’t know of a single person in my beloved circle of family or friends who hasn’t changed profoundly in those four months. It’s impossible to have stayed the same.
“I can’t find my happy switch,” said one of my favourite friends, tired of sitting alone in her pretty rooms, eager to join the social cabaret again. Come hear the music play.
The biological life cycle in my own circle has been both reassuring and relentless. Engagements were announced, marriages (if not weddings) took place, adorable babies safely arrived, elders sadly died of other diseases. Gardens bloomed, what a mercy.
Out in public, social cues were missed, hypochondria thrived, as did pure blazing don’t breathe on me on the street resentment.
A fierce friend in Montreal told me she was recently walking along the street and two guys half her age running on the sidewalk didn’t even budge as they came straight toward her and a friend. She put out her arm to stop them and then yelled “a--holes!” as they veered around her and kept running.
OK, so that response needs refining. I won’t get into the mask debate. Canadians are into compliance, so making them mandatory is good, like having your mother’s wise insistent voice inside your head: “Just wear it.” And I did like the slogan I recently saw on Twitter: “Mask it or casket.”
I’m generally in awe of how most of the people I love and look to for support, inspiration and, God love me, a few laughs, have navigated through this part of the worst public health crisis of our time. Some have dived deep into the science — “this is the first time in history we actually can stop a pandemic in real time,” said one man I know. He was pretty excited.
And of course it isn’t nearly over — what’s that politically incorrect expression? — till the fat lady sings or, more significantly, till the lady discovers a vaccine in her well-run lab.
In the meantime, we all have to make our own risk assessment and it’s not important or relevant who we might offend in the process. “Don’t let anyone bully you into a social activity or encounter you don’t think is safe,” says one of my doctors.
Eek, that sounds like sex but it’s not, just a prudent awareness of everyone we socially and even still distantly reengage with bringing their own string of social contacts to an encounter with you.
I’ve gone first to the dentist (age-related priority), but not yet to my hair stylist. Grocery stores have been perfectly well organized for a while to help keep us safe. Little fear there. However, if I avoided going to any who won’t continue to pay their front line workers hero pay, I wouldn’t eat, but really shame on you all. Looking forward to your next quarterly report.
Who was I then, just four short months ago? A little too fearful for my own good. Who am I now? Stronger, calmer, still relatively healthy and looking forward to the next step. I am my own Command Table.