Pandemic Time

When I pulled the milk jug out of the refrigerator this morning, the date caught my eye: 

SELL BY
MAY 21

What day is it? I had to check my phone. It's May 26, which you may or may not already have known. 

Reader, I put that milk in my coffee anyway. And it's fine, or at least it doesn't taste terrible, and I'm not dead yet. 

But it's one more symptom of the bizarre time dilation of the Great Lockdown. 

March, everyone agreed, lasted forever. We didn't know what was happening, day to day, and everything hung in a strange suspension that made things scheduled a week away feel as if they might as well be the next year. 

But since everything shut down, I don't know where the time has gone. I would be hard-pressed to tell you one specific thing that happened in April, although my daughter's birthday was the 10th and Easter happened somewhere in there. I think April was when my dad got off the Zaandam—and yes, I just checked, he got home on April 3. I know I baked a cake for my mom's birthday (May 1) even though she hasn't been around to celebrate for a long time. Yesterday was Memorial Day, the earliest possible day that Memorial Day can be. And next week is June already.

A friend of mine has been knocking a year off her age for as long as I've known her. She took care of her father as he died of cancer, and she considers that a lost year that shouldn't count against her age. That feels reasonable, especially now. Will we all be allowed to cut three months, six months, a year off our age for the Year of COVID-19? 

Age is not something I think much about. I started out younger than everybody, and it surprises me to find I'm often the oldest in the (virtual) room these days. But if it's just a number, I feel entitled to stay 54 for another six months, at least. 

At the recommendation of the great and gifted Laura Benedict, I started using a Panda Planner to organize my life last year (last year? 2018? I have no idea). It's been transformational, but these days it feels performative instead of constructive. Every day it asks me to list three things I'm grateful for, which vary day to day (today: sunshine, grilled cheese, Spotify podcasts) and three things I'm looking forward to, which gets increasingly baffling. Saying I look forward to the things I do look forward to—cookouts with my family, afternoon hangouts in bars with my friends, NATIONALS BASEBALL—without knowing when any of those things might happen again just makes me sad. Which is contrary to the point of the Panda Planner. 

It's hang time, I tell myself. Just hang time. Which makes me think of the beautiful song about this by Fountains of Wayne and the late Adam Schlesinger, another victim of this stupid virus. So I'll leave you with that today, and try to feel the wealth of having all kinds of time.