One of the silly little things that I do is "memory plan." How does one memory plan?, I am sure you aren't asking. It's basically just keeping a record of my days, sometimes with pictures or doodles, more often with stickers. I've been doing it now, on and off, since 2017; my engagement with it waxes and wanes, based on how engaged I am in my own life.
This evening, I went over my "memory journal" from last February and March. It was fun to look over at first. In February, my words and descriptions covered mainly the quotidian concerns of work, and the personality politics there, as well as an inauspicious (and in retrospect, alarming) number of colleagues and reports being sick. However, also in retrospect, I had a very healthy social life: a gathering of my "Read the Book or Get the Fuck Out Book Club"; dinner with a former boss; Galentine's Celebrations with my lady friends; lunch with my aunt and uncle; road trips to see people in Indy; movie nights and catch-up sessions...I smiled as I worked my way through the month. But the red flags were there; I freaking recorded them without realizing their significance!
And then I turned the page and looked at March.
Even in that first week of March, we carried on, much as we always had. I attended meetings and ran errands and spent time with friends went to one of the best happy hours of my life on the first Friday in March, without even an inkling that that was, basically, Last Call. Closing Time.
Two days after that I was scrolling through my Facebook, when something from my old California library--my old stomping grounds, the place that formed me as a professional--popped up in my Facebook feed.
I was more than a little perturbed--the only point of reference I had was the Swine Flu, back in '09, and we hadn't closed down for that! Yet here we were...
After that, there were only a few more days of normal to go before everything officially went to hell. And by "normal" I mean, pretend like things are normal when they are in fact disintegrating fast. And then we came to a sudden halt, and things like masks and quarantines and Social Isolation and Tiger King and that fucking stupid ass phrase "The New Normal" became our life. And they still are our life.
On an almost daily basis, I think back on "lasts"--the last happy hour. The last concert. The last time I head my still-relatively-newborn "nephew." The last time I shook a hand. The last time I went to the grocery store without giving folks some serious side-eye. A lot of things were lasts that we don't even remember. But you know what? You bet your ass that even if we can't remember a lot of our lasts from Before Coronavirus, we will sure as shit remember the firsts when we get to After.
What do you remember, and miss, the most?
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