`NO FUN AT ALL'
Suburbanite cancer survivor dreads the coming winter without social interaction that generates warm feelings on the coldest days
The name of this column might have to be changed to the Confinement Chronicles.
Life in the 70s suggests that the 72-year-old columnist is living a life that generates 650 interesting words every month. Would that it were so. Sadly, in the chaotic culture of COVID-19, this life, like too many others, has been — in the words of W.B. Yeats (how's that for a classy reference?) — “changed, changed utterly.”
“A terrible beauty” is not quite born. But it seems we're headed in that direction.
The plague has hit my beloved hometown really hard. With the number of cases exploding as schools reopened in September, the Quebec government mandated a 28-day lockdown for Montreal.
Bars, restaurants, public gatherings … even family affairs were affected by the extreme measures.
This wasn't a huge adjustment for me. As a septuagenarian suburbanite cancer survivor, I haven't ventured into downtown Montreal since mid-March. That was when Quebec Premier François Legault declared a public health emergency and asked everyone over the age of 70 to stay at home, rather than risk exposure to the novel coronavirus.
At the time, the number of confirmed cases in all of Quebec was 24.
In late September, the number of cases in my West Island suburb was edging up toward 300, with more than 40 deaths. And we're doing better than most parts of Montreal.
Like most of my neighbours, I have been careful. Social distancing when I walk my dog, minimal outings. Quick visits to the supermarket, pharmacy and booze outlet, always while wearing a mask and washing my hands on entry.
Cross them all off my list. Fortunately, I'm not in dire straits.
My friend Claude Larocque, a former police officer, visits Costco every week and subsequently delivers essentials to the neighbourhood's needy seniors.
I have enough honey, granola and orange juice to last quite a while. And on the recommendation of my wise daughter, I subscribe to HelloFresh, the virtues of which I'll extol in a future column. Suffice to say: Six dinners a week, all delicious.
So I'm not going to starve. But confinement is no fun at all … and I'm dreading the months to come.
Quoting another great poet: “Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow.”
Sorry T.S. Eliot, but I'm not counting on any warmth from December to March — not in the weather forecast and not in the social interaction that generates warm feelings on the coldest days.
The COVID-19 strictures may continue into November and December. Then as holiday-themed advertising cranks up, it may be beginning to look a lot like Christmas on our TV screens. But on the deserted and increasingly snowy streets, not so much.
Frank Bruni, my favourite New York Times columnist, recently quoted colleague Leslie Jamison, who captured the yearning I feel for a casual stroll downtown:
“In the way that absence illuminates desire, and breakage illuminates function — you don't notice the door knob until it twists off in your hand — quarantine has made it plain to me how much I miss the daily, unspoken, casual company of strangers, the people whose names and lives I'll never know, who populate my ordinary urban days their bodies on the subway, their stray comments at the ATM, their hands holding whole milk and gummy bears in front of me in the bodega line.”
Lovely, yes?
And, in this terrible time, sad.
The United States votes a week from today. It will be the most consequential — and, I fear, the most tumultuous — U.S. presidential election in my lifetime.
As noted in my previous column, my interest in U.S. politics was sparked and nurtured by my maternal grandfather, a Russian immigrant who loved Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I also have many longtime friends who live in the U.S. I worry about them … and us … and everyone influenced by the greatest superpower. Let's hope the world is a happier place on Nov. 4.