Friday, March 12, 2021. Two weeks since my second shot. I finish a midday Zoom and stick my head out the back door. One hubcap-sized slab of ice remains on the patio. It’ll be gone by sundown.
Thus encouraged, I perform a strange series of actions: I slip my laptop into its sleeve, slip my office keys into my pocket and slip out the front door, bound for downtown State College. My big plan is to get a coffee and sit outside and drink it.
En route, I stop by the Carnegie Building to get my mail: two magazines that I probably won’t read. I add them to the pile of unread magazines on my office desk.
Across the mall from Carnegie, a ring of snowdrops dances around a maple tree. On the Old Main lawn I hear a thwack: Yup, two guys playing catch.
A few weeks back, The New York Times ran a story about an older gent in Texas whose heart’s desire was to do what these kids are doing. His wife put out the word on social media. Ten people, ranging in age from 17 to 70, heeded the call.
Reporter Mike Wilson mentioned that the lonely ballplayer, Frank Miller, had repaired his catcher’s mitt with Gorilla Glue on the morning of the big day. At the end of the pitch-and-catch session, which was everything he hoped it would be, Frank and his wife Alice head home, “satisfied that they’d put a little Gorilla Glue on the universe.”
Judging from the comment section, readers huffed the story like it was oxygen (not glue).
Onward to Webster’s. Inside, the first person I see is owner Elaine Wilgus, who puts Gorilla Glue on the microverse that is State College. Elaine is hauling a wagonload of books, a comforting sight if ever there was one.
My dusty mug, with my first name inked on the bottom, is on a bank of bookshelves, right where I left it. I ask for a rinse and a coffee. I set myself up at a table in the alley, and set to writing this column.
At the table next to mine, two high school kids are talking about their “friend group”: who’s gay, who’s straight, who’s bi-, who’s inter.
What’s strange about all this is that there was a time when none of it was strange at all. I think about how long it has been: I last put my computer in its sleeve in November. The time before that was last May. I haven’t been to my office since January. I haven’t been to Webster’s since -can it be? – almost two years.
Thus has the ordinary been rendered extraordinary by absence and quarantine.
Last year, I imagined dancing in the streets at pandemic’s end. We’ve since learned that plagues subside incrementally: Now the vaccinated can dine with the vaccinated. Next week we’ll drive to New York, stay with twice-vaxxed friends and walk the streets of my hometown. I’m counting on daffodils and live music in Central Park. Maybe I’ll bring my mitt.
This summer, if the variants don’t outwit us, we’ll travel to see family and friends. Maybe I’ll go to a jazz club or a ballgame or a movie or a museum. This fall, if all goes well, I’ll teach in a classroom and interact with real, live students again.
In the meantime, we’re peeking at airfares and Airbnbs and VRBOs. We’re talking about seders, garden parties, reunions, road trips, and being there for the birth of another granddaughter. (And yes, we are mindful of how lucky we are to be emerging from this thing unscathed.)
I wonder if we’ll miss, just a little, the simplicity of the quarantined life, when the big decision of the day was what to cook for dinner. Second biggest was where to walk: Tudek? The golf course? The Arboretum? Third: Netflix or Amazon Prime?
But this is how the return to normalcy begins: with a walk I took almost every day for 25 years; with seeing Elaine at her post; with coffee downtown; with an end-of-winter afternoon sunny and warm enough for sitting outside; with starlings settling raucously into the bamboo grove along my backyard fence at dusk.
And in the wider world: with arguments about Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potatohead; with no (un)presidential tweets; with Oprah and the Royals; with the speed of Jacob deGrom’s fastball and the distance on Giancarlo Stanton’s home run.
To the extent that this is spring fever, this is the worst, which is to say the best case I’ve ever had.
Today I look like I’m performing the most unremarkable series of actions: packing a computer, checking mail, ordering coffee, sitting in the sun.
In my mind, though, I’m dancing in the street.
