My Inner Teenage Rebel….

I drive into the Costco parking lot, my African Print cloth mask in my purse, ready to face the crowds. I’m stunned to see the parking lot is half empty. It feels like the fear has ebbed for the moment. 

“Maybe I’ll find toilet paper,” I think.

I head to the entrance, donning the mask my friend made me. I see the other shoppers wearing a variety of mask fashion – the plain white, the little blue ones, the-home-made- with-cool-fabric ones. 

By the time I get to the entrance, mine is fully in place as I show my Costco card. I immediately feel the rebel within me start to kick and scream inside. 

“I hate masks,” my inner teenager says.
“I hate name tags, and now I hate masks.
Really?
We have to wear these stupid fucking things?
This is ridiculous.” I hear myself rant.

I trundle along with my trolley, my eyesight a bit scant, the mask impinging some kind of clear vision. Or maybe it’s my breath that’s fogging my glasses. I don’t know. Still I rant inside, “I hate masks.”

But everyone is wearing them. Not a good idea to be the rebel now. I might get an electric shock from some COVID police person cruising the aisles and be reported to headquarters. Maybe I’d be shamed, right there in the store over the paging system. 

“We have a live one in aisle 5 looking at crackers.
She’s not wearing a mask.
She’s a possible spreader.”

I wonder about this “new world order.” Is it going to be like this? Masks? No hugs? No gatherings? And what about the vaccinations? Will we HAVE to be vaccinated? Where did civil liberties go? What about choice? What about fashion for god sake?

I ponder these things as I cruise by the masked bearded young man who’s stocking mangoes, the taller masked man lining up the cheeses. There are few in the store without their nose and mouths covered.

I have a moment of hope.

Perhaps this is my lucky day and I’ll find the toilet paper, which I haven’t been able to get since I returned from India two months ago. I scurry over to the wide aisles where the paper goods are stocked and scan for Charmin.

Nope.
Oh, and no ground beef either. 
Yeah, the run on ground beef is happening.
No coconut milk in cans.
No canned tomatoes.

“I really hope my tomatoes grow well this summer. I’m going to learn to can,” I reassure myself.

I find most of the things on my list. The big bonus today is there’s no line. I sidle up to check out and behind the counter is a Muslim woman wearing not only a mask but a head wrap.

“You must be hot,” I say.
“Yes,” she smiles with her eyes.

We talk about the tulips I’ve bought, and how Spring is here. We don’t mention the awkwardness of our masks, that we can’t see each others’ faces or that this has become a new normal. 

She hands me the receipt and I walk towards the door. There, where the two people on either side of the door usually stand, are two people encased in large plastic booths, where you have to now hold up your receipt to the plastic so they can take a look.

“Seriously?” I wonder. “THIS is our new world?” 

Hard to imagine kids starting college, weddings, people dating for that matter. 

How is it all going to work?

I take off my mask as soon as I’m out the door. Free to breathe the fresh air and spread germs all around the inside of my own car.

Here’s a couple of things they don’t tell you about sheltering in place…

Here’s a couple of things they don’t tell you about sheltering in place…

They don’t tell you that your hair will be a wild beast to tame and that when you’re 6-7 weeks past your haircut appointment you won’t know what to do with the stragglers, the wild-will-of-their-own hairs that don’t listen or lay down when you want them to. They don’t tell you your roots will show, and your secret of highlighting will be let out.

They don’t tell you you’ll be wandering through your own kitchen looking for something. Even if you have healthy snacks on hand and good food to eat, most likely you’ll be grazing in your own food stalls more often than usual. You’ll be looking for a way to quell the feelings that come like ocean waves, one after the other, some little ripples on the surface and then every so often, a big, fat wave will take you down and tumble you and scrape you on the rocks and sand below. 

No, they don’t tell you about the tumbler waves. Like the one that took me down yesterday, had my heavy heart reaching for something in the cracker jar, the home-made chocolate jar, the almond butter jar. I wanted something to quell that feeling of aloneness. I wanted a hand to hold, a body to hug, someone’s sparkling eyes to gaze into and feel the life behind the pupils.

No, they don’t tell you that you will have to face your existential loneliness – that we come in alone and we go out alone and all the connections along the way are fleeting and passing.

When sheltering in place they don’t tell you that there will be no plumbers to come and help you and that eventually you’ll go online and google “How to clean my P-Trap” because your bathroom sink is clogged and the water isn’t draining. They don’t tell you you’ll be on your knees, unthreading the P-Trap, pulling the stopper out of the sink and cleaning the black slime from it. They don’t tell you how satisfied you’ll feel that you DID IT, all by yourself, with a little help from google and a friend on the phone.

They also don’t tell you how many families will be reuniting through ZOOM for the holidays – people in different countries spending Seders together, Easter dinners together, people who haven’t gathered in years. They don’t tell you your neighbors will offer to pick up things at Costco for you, that you’ll be getting snail mail with art and letters again. They don’t tell you that you’ll be avidly gardening, taking yoga and dance classes online and that there will be an explosion of creativity bursting in the world.

They don’t tell you that the Earth will get a break from all of the pollution we create, that the air will be clean and you’ll be able to breathe deeply. You’ll be able to see the Himalayas from hundreds of miles away. They don’t tell you there will be new verbs in our language – zooming, marcoing – and other new phrases – sheltering in place, social distancing. You’ll hear phrases like, “We took a socially distant walk,” which only 6 weeks ago would have sounded preposterous.

They don’t tell that you won’t want to return to “normal” and to the madness of driving and schlepping here and there and everywhere.

No, they don’t tell you it’s a wild ride staying at home, that the water is deep and the waves are steady. They don’t tell you you’ll have to let go, let your old self dissolve and wait for the new one to emerge.