Moments, Not Days...

 “We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

---Cesare Pavese

Are we there yet? This column will publish on December 17^th, which is the 352^nd day of 2020. It might feel more like the 4, 352^nd day, but that’s a pandemic for you. The days blend together because so much of our structure is gone. Friday night used to be date night, maybe dinner and a movie; now it’s takeout and Netflix. Thursdays were often “thirsty,” and it was common to meet someone for a beer after work. Now, more than a few of us are drinking alone, and that’s problematic in a lot of ways. For many, Sunday mornings meant church services and brunch. Now it’s another Zoom log on, a little web worship and a bowl of cereal.

For so many this year, the memories might be more about small moments, rather than big days. This pandemic didn’t last just a day, or even a week. It’s still here. It’s not like Pearl Harbor; there is no one date that will live in infamy, but rather several moments over the course of several months, and each person will have a different set of memories of this time. When major world events happen, everyone seems to remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard about it. My father would tell me often about his mother calling him in from a backyard game of kickball on a Sunday afternoon after hearing a bulletin on the radio that the war had begun. My mother remembers getting laundry ready to hang on the line while an emotional and almost speechless Walter Cronkite announced the assassination of the President on live television. I remember being 8 ½ months pregnant, running errands and chasing after an active three-year-old on September 11, 2001 when the first of four planes attacked the United States. 

These were all days that we remember, but the pandemic doesn’t really have a day. It’s been an ongoing event, stretched out over months and months of uncertainty. Much like the virus itself, pinning it down is difficult. Do we use the date the first US case was diagnosed? The date we surpassed 10,000 cases? The date with the highest death toll? Unlike a bombing or an assassination, a pandemic isn’t just one action, on one day, in one place. It’s so much more, and it’s still happening. So much for the “Just watch, after November 3^rd it will just go away” theory, right? We don’t seem to define the passage of time by days anymore, it’s about which step of which phase we are in, and whether we are moving into the next one or falling back to a previous one. It’s like a game of Chutes and Ladders but we’re all losing in very individual ways. Jobs, loved ones, homes, family vacations, and holiday get-togethers have all been lost these past months; that’s a lot of moments and not all of them are ones we will treasure.

As many do at this time of year, I’m thinking back to all that’s happened and while no particular day stands out, there are moments that will stay with me forever, but I have no idea of the dates any of them occurred. There was the time I spent 45 minutes in line outside the supermarket, chatting with a nurse from Salem hospital who was telling me about the shortages of masks, gowns and gloves and how she feared what could happen if cases continued to go up. Another moment happened when I heard a friend had passed away from the virus, and how chilling it was to realize it wasn’t just other people; my people were in danger too. There was the day my daughter learned that her high school track career was over and there would never be another meet, another team dinner or another chance at getting to states. Thankfully, not all of the moments of this past year are awful. I celebrated when friends who had trouble getting home from Italy finally got back safely. When we stepped on the field, safely distanced, for a high school commencement ceremony it seemed the first time that there was a teeny bit of hope for a return to normal. When I sat at a newly-created sidewalk café and had a glass of wine while listening to the ocean waves on the beach across the street it was a small moment of joy after several difficult days of lines and shortages.

It’s been, for the most part, an awful year. Everyone has had their mini-meltdowns, cranky times, and frustrations. For most of us though, if we really think about it, woven in among those times there have been a few small victories, a couple of moments that had us stopping, for just a second, to revel in them. Perhaps the pandemic has shown us that nailing something down to a specific day isn’t the point? If we step away from the calendar, and just reach back in our memory, we may find moments that lifted us up and carried us through dark days. Ive spent more nights than I can remember curled up with my pug Penny, and those moments have carried me through. The pandemic will pass, but these moments will always be here. We shouldn’t ever forget them.