I made 3 cups of coffee this morning and forgot them all. The 4th cup I heated up milk in the new frother my friend gave me for my birthday and pretended it was a real latte.
My apartment looks out on the park and I miss the regulars from the Before. (Will that be the name of this time period? The Before? Or maybe The Change? Or maybe the Ante-Covid Period). I miss the people I saw every morning while sipping coffee.
Morning walkers, joggers, the off brand crossfitters, the unicyclist (not joking). A group of 6 or 7 old men, sometimes they walked with a lady. And I'm sure they called her a lady. Mostly white, although... I'm trying to think if there was a non-white one with them sometimes. An Asian man maybe was occasionally on the walk. They kept a swift pace. Maybe some of them still walk, but I don't recognize them outside of that group.
I miss the two older black ladies who walked their tiny dogs every morning. They parked their cars then looked around to get a sense of the day, in jean jackets that reached their knees and bejeweled hats in the winter. Cotton capris and v-neck short sleeved sparkly t-shirts in the summer. One had a pronounced limp, the other the simpler waddle of the tight hips of the old. They talked, catching up each morning. I worry about them.
I don’t know when I’m going to a coffee shop or bakery or movie or any closely packed place again. All of the states - especially my current state of Texas and my home state of Florida - are opening up like they were closed for a really long, really weird holiday. The powers that be were okay to open as soon as they saw that black and brown people were dying at disproportionally higher rates.
That’s not how math works. They don’t understand proportions.
How do you go back to “normal” after a hundred thousand people have died? That number is only a slight exaggeration. As of today, the total is a little over 90 thousand dead, but there’s nothing - no national strategy, no contingency plan - stopping the number of deaths from reaching 100k, or 200k by the end of July.
I hope I’m wrong, but my math is better than theirs (note: I am not a ‘math person’). If 100 thousand people died between mid-March and Mid-May, There’s no reason to believe a hundred thousand more people - of any race or ethnicity - won’t die between Memorial Day and the end of July.
We’re not getting a do-over. There’s no going back to January or February or to any place in this century, let alone most of the last. There’s no going back to normal now. But, apparently campus will open up in about 90 days.
