“Hey guys, guess what I’m doing today at work?” I said one sunny morning a few weeks ago as we snaked our way with traffic toward Evan’s school.
The conversation in the backseat paused: “What?” they asked in unison.
“Well, some construction workers on campus found a time capsule from the 1940s in the wall of one of the buildings they’re renovating, and today they’re opening it and I get to be there to see what’s inside! I’m gonna write a little story for the magazine about it.”
“Whoa! Your day’s gonna be better than mine!” Evan said.
The 1940s to them may as well have been the time of the dinosaur. We wondered aloud how big the time capsule is, and what might be in it: Something related to World War II probably, I said. A newspaper, Kostyn guessed. But what else? What objects and pictures would people from that era want to include to show future generations who they were, what life was like then? The boys couldn’t wait to hear what I saw pulled out of that box.
“Will we put stuff in it from now and bury it again for people in the future to find out about this time?” Evan asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I wonder what kinds of things would go into a time capsule today to explain to people far in the future what life was like in 2020.” We spent the rest of the ride brainstorming items to include: Digital devices that wouldn’t even work in 80 years? A video game controller, Evan said. A newspaper. Something about climate change, Kostyn said, (“Maybe some leaves, in case there are no trees in the future”) or Trump.
That was Thursday, March 5 — just 17 days ago. Our ideas did not include anything about a virus spreading around the globe (even though it had infected 95,748 people and killed 3,286 by then); there was no talk of a respirator mask or a roll of toilet paper as items that were precious and important in 2020. There was no indication that that carefree ride to school may turn out to be our second-to-last such ride in the whole school year.
But 17 days later, it seems every home has become a time capsule. Our busy schedules have been frozen, our entire lives shrunk to fit inside our living rooms and pantries.
For the past couple years I’ve been studying and writing about the interconnectedness of all things, how “othering” seems to be an ingrained imperative in our society and also complete and utter bullshit, a convincing, destructive mirage. This virus is showing us that, not only in the indiscriminate way it infects across all races, cultures, genders, political affiliations and country borders, but also in the way it is revealing the commonality of our basic priorities, our lives and our emotions.
I see myself in video clips from people in China and Italy and all parts of the U.S. We all value our freedoms, but even more so our health. We all worry about our elders, and our children. We care for one another; we create and perform and joke to lift one another’s spirits because that, it turns out, lifts our own. Herd immunity in a whole different sense. We are all, at times, anxious and restless, resigned and grateful. We all feel inconvenienced yet resolute, self-absorbed yet generous.
I drive through the town I live in and see all the restaurants with their lights dimmed, stools on top of bars, and I think about the people who rely on hourly wages and tips that have disappeared. I remember how it felt to live month-to-month, to count every dollar and cent in my purse before going into a grocery store. I remember the stress of having to make careful choices in every aisle and keep a running total in my head as I added things to my cart. I don’t have to do that right now but I was there not long ago, and I could be again. Any of us could. Many of us are, or will be soon. I am acutely aware that the place I was working at this time last year just laid off its employees, while I have a job to Zoom to tomorrow.
I know that not much of life is just or fair or predictable. But I also know that much of life contains goodness, produces acts of love, and displays our abiding interconnectedness — the good through the bad. I know that what you are, I was; and what I am, you will be. Today I am grateful to be healthy, and tomorrow I could be the feverish one among us, or the hospitalized. Or the one who mourns.
The forecast calls for snow tonight, but I also know that spring is here — things are blooming and thriving and changing and living and dying all at the same time. I have seen the buds beginning to burst on the trees during my walks in the woods, walks that look solitary but absolutely are not. And I know that the longer we are all stuck inside, the less we drive and fly and use and trash, the more the Earth heals. I know the terrible irony in the fact that as we all hide from a virus that is wreaking havoc on delicate lungs, leaving people gasping and choking, the air outside is actually becoming less polluted.
Last week, most of us tried to fill our grocery carts with some semblance of our usual food stores, even as we made modifications for the staples we couldn’t find. I’m hoping this week more of us will begin to relax the false grip we’ve had on “need,” to see it, open-palmed, for what it really is — not as singular but collective, a community-based obligation. What you need, perhaps I can provide, so that WE have.
I’m hoping many of us will buy less, make do, and leave more for those who are disguised as strangers but are really just us in different clothes, us with different circumstances, us existing in differently colored time capsules.
A crisis connects us to what matters, and even the earliest days of this one has done that. My family matters, and so does yours. Our healthcare professionals are vital and so are the people who stock our grocery store shelves. Zoom meetings, virtual happy hours, FaceTime, phone calls and group text threads have kept me more connected to more loved ones than I’ve been in a long time. How lovely that the vast majority of us are no longer busy, or can even tell ourselves that we are. We have time to sit and breathe and be together, apart.
We are all living in tiny pods within the same time capsule, filling it mostly, thankfully, with resiliency, love, community, comfort food and goofy TikTok videos. With any luck, we’ll also eventually add a lasting new way of being — as one — for future generations to find.
If we play our cards right, we’ll even be able to throw in some hope for the trees.
Take care, everyone. Wherever you are, I’m there too.
