Post 56 - May 6, 2020
Day 56…
Every evening when we lean out of our windows and clap for our healthcare workers, perhaps we should also be clapping for ourselves.
We haven't been beaten.
We are still very much here.
It’s been nearly two months since this whole thing started in earnest and yet every single night, we are still able to cheer on our troops who are still out there fighting the good fight.
On Monday, I did our weekly grocery shop in Michael’s place.
I can’t remember what he was doing that made me volunteer, but this week it was on me.
He trusted me with The List.
As usual, the line to get in stretched well around the block.
We were all standing at the proscribed six foot-intervals.
We were all wearing masks.
It took well over an hour to get into the store.
(1:17:26 to be exact)
The first half of the line, well out of sight of the store, snakes past residential buildings.
They are beautiful old brownstone apartments with large windows.
This being New York City, those buildings edge right onto the sidewalk.
The people who live in the last house before you hit the retail buildings that line Columbus Avenue, have started hanging up signs with snippets of the conversations that they overhear from all of us outside waiting.
They write down the ridiculous things they hear and make large signs with the best lines on them and hang them outside their windows for all of us to read.
They are often hilarious.
Nobody is safe.
They have started an Instagram account @traderjoeslineuws
When you first get on the line, it is something to look forward to when you get about halfway through.
How defeated can we all be if we can still laugh?
Once we get to the front of the line, we hit the, now, ubiquitous store traffic warden.
It's a new job that's been created just for this crisis.
The masked warden sits out in front of any popular store and makes sure that no more than the allowed amount of people are let inside.
One out - One In.
No mask? You can’t enter.
Once inside, it’s actually pleasant to shop these days.
Trader Joe’s in Manhattan is always packed with long (well-ordered) lines at the checkout.
These days, though, there are only about 25 people at a time allowed inside, so it is never crowded.
The shelves are full.
We have not started to feel the national meat shortage yet. I suppose that that is yet to come.
The only thing that seems to be hard to find in food stores is bread flour.
With time on their hands, everybody has started baking bread.
At the checkout counters, there are now plastic guards separating the cashiers from each other.
The cashiers will pack your groceries into paper bags themselves, but they won’t pack the groceries into bags that you’ve brought it. If you have brought your own bags, they put the groceries back into your cart. It is up to you, now, to take the cart out onto the street and pack your groceries yourself.
This keeps the cashiers from handling your bags.
The whole experience is radically different from the way it was just two months ago, but it works.
We have all figured out how to adjust to shopping with the virus.
At the wine store near us, you aren’t allowed into the store at all.
You stand online - 6 feet apart - masked - and get to the front door where somebody takes your order (and your credit card) and comes back with your wine in a bag.
The dry-cleaner near us is open for limited hours. Regardless of when they open, they are always closed at 3.
There is a new plexiglass shield set up between the people working in there and the customers. This is true of almost every open retail establishment on the Upper West Side.
Just a side note - I had something left over from two months ago that needed to be dry-cleaned. It’s not like I have any occasion to wear much beyond a t-shirt these days!
Over the last two months, we have changed the way we navigate through our days in ways we would never had imagined before.
From the complete confusion and terror of the first couple of weeks, we have now gotten enough of a handle on this that we are getting by.
There is a whole new way to shop and it works well enough.
Everybody knows what they are expected to do, and they do it.
When there is something you don't know how to do, all you need to do is ask your friends on an online social site and somebody out there has figured a way through and are happy to share.
We have created work-arounds for almost everything.
Can’t meet up? Let’s do it virtually.
Two months ago, I had never even heard of Zoom - now, it’s a regular part of my week.
Two months into this pandemic, we are still here, and we are surviving.
Yes, it’s all different, but so what?
I’m not for one second suggesting that any of this is easy, but was life before this so free from stress?
We can’t do anything about the fact that the virus is here.
It’s here.
WE also can’t do anything about getting rid of it beyond what we are doing now - staying home, staying away from each other, wearing masks.
And living this new and strange way.
Spending our days yearning for an uncertain future is completely counterproductive.
For the moment, this is our life.
We are living it and, guess what, we are more or less OK.
There have been unimaginable losses to the virus, but how is that really different from any other time in our lives?
We are human and we experience loss on a regular basis.
It is part of our existence.
Loss is not new.
Not being able to mourn with our loved ones is new.
Not being able to mourn with our loved ones make the losses that much harder to bear.
Harder, though.
Not impossible.
We are a resilient species.
We are blessed with something that gets us through times like this.
Hope.
Hope allows us to believe that our lives can be better.
That belief leads us ever forward towards a better life.
We are on that journey now.
We are figuring this out.
We are still here.
Tonight at 7, when you lean out the window and clap for the incredibly brave people who are out there every single day working to keep us well, maybe spare a few claps for yourself.
We are ALL “out there” every single day fighting our way through this pandemic.
We are out there, and we are far from being beaten.
We deserve some applause.