“Welcome back to America, do you recognize it?” a friend emailed recently, a day after I landed back in the U.S. from a seven-month stay with my partner in South Africa.
Though I can’t speak about America, I can say that the neighborhood where I live here in New York City has changed in some by-now familiar ways. Most people wear masks when they go out. Stores have made face coverings a condition of entry.
The state is encouraging everyone to download an app that sends you COVID-19 exposure alerts. Signs posted on windows and fences remind you to stand six feet apart.
KEEP THIS FAR APART
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For the past week, I’ve kept apart, mostly in my apartment, where I wait to see whether I experience any symptoms of the coronavirus. I go out for solo strolls. So far, I feel fine.
Maybe it’s me but the ambient noise — the low-level hum that courses through the city – seems a tick lower than when I left in February. Trash trucks make their rounds, though the streets seem less tidy.
The world has come some way in its understanding of the coronavirus. “I struggle to tell from the news reports how terrible contracting COVID-19 may be,” I wrote on April 1, six days into a 21-day nationwide lockdown in South Africa. “Some people seem to experience mild symptoms, others no symptoms; some people die. I hope never to find out.”
We know more now about how to stay safe. Unlike the U.S., countries that instituted strict lockdowns have bent the curve of new infections. On April 15, I wrote: “So far more than 2 million people around the world have become infected with the coronavirus. Nearly 129,000 have died.”
By now more than 34 million people around the world have become infected and more than a million have died. The virus is projected to take many more lives.
On a whim the other day, I reached for the book “Kitchen Confidential,” which I’ve owned but until now not read. Even before the pandemic, I didn’t frequent restaurants. And I don’t cook, really. Still, the book feels like a discovery.
The vibrancy of the writing aside, Anthony Bourdain’s account of kitchens – their intensity and banging (as in people kicking closed oven doors) and heat – how working in one might be the closest thing to being part of the crew of a pirate ship – makes me yearn to stand shoulder-to-shoulder (safely) with others. I rarely thought this before the pandemic, but I look forward to one day buying a beer in a crowded bar.
That’s how home feels different now. We’re socially distant.
It’s autumn in New York. The days are mild and sunny and dry. The nights clear and cool for sleeping. The nearby ocean lends its warmth. I always like the season. But this year especially, it hints at a future when the pandemic is far away.