Someone broke into my car this morning. It was 4-something in the morning, and I had just fumbled with my keys when I opened my car door to realize the interior looked like a bear had rummaged through it, only we live in a neighborhood in Reno where we don’t have bears.
The interior of my car smelled, too— something like stale cigarette smoke, B.O., that smell after you’ve been running outside for a while (that wild, sweaty, almost tin-like smell) and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Paper, trash, the goodie bag from my visit to the dentist, all of it, was tossed around the interior, making it look like a big messy garbage heap. After I packed everything away (including my fear that this was how I was going to contract COVID-19— by some asshole who broke into my car) I drove to the gym for what will be the last time for who knows how long.
It turns out, nothing much was stolen— a few dollars in change that I keep in the middle console for trips to the car wash. Not the two pairs of cycling shoes, not my helmet or gloves. Not my Garmin bike computer or charging cables. In all, I guess I’m lucky. But I wonder at this strange act of desperation and the world we’ve arrived in so suddenly. It feels like something I read back in college. It is strange to live in these times.
I haven’t been fundraising for the Arthritis Foundation this week, just like I haven’t really been riding. The weather turned terrible, and I’m facing a big deadline for my writing, which coincides with several daily deadlines of updating the college webpage with information regarding COVID-19. I’m not sure what to think or how to say it.
First, I’m incredibly grateful for my health, home and lifestyle. I feel for people who are sick or at risk of contracting the virus and who are forced to fear the inevitable. I worry for my family who live abroad, some in countries who are experiencing terrible losses. I feel for those who have family who are sick, who fear they will get sick, or who are quarantined already.
I guess all of this really points to a very obvious thing we often ignore: at the end of the day, we’re all just people. Whether one religion or another, viruses don’t discriminate. We do that.
While I could write about the training challenges this will entail, I”m honestly more touched by the concern voiced not only at the corporate level, but for the desire to keep one another healthy that I see from most of the people I come in contact with. The grocery store clerks, those who work in retail, those who ride the bike with me and who attend OTF with me— they are concerned for each other (and of course, concerned with themselves.)
Look, I have no idea who bought all the toilet paper—seriously WTF— but of the people I see, who speak to me, who share a space with me in one way or another, they have been incredibly understanding and kind. For that, I am grateful. And for that very reason, I will miss seeing all of them very much.
The fabric that holds us all together is starting to show its seams. I wonder if this will be like going back in time. I wonder this after a day spent of physically speaking to no one (I typed emails and texts, but my physical voice was only used in two conversations). Instead, I let my chickens free-range in the back. I fed them, watered them, collected their eggs. The dog stayed with me (I was shaken a bit from the break-in that morning) and she barked when a creeper would walk by our yard. The cats slept in my office as I worked.
It reminded me, somewhat, of what my grandmother told me life was like on the farm outside Philly, when she was growing up. Only now what happens when all the fundraising, working, spending, worrying, schooling—all the verbs this country has penned and proliferated— stops?
I’ve wanted to apply to the Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference this year. I’ve revised and revised and revised an essay based on my experience visiting South Africa with my mom for the first time a few years ago. We have family there, and I was struck by the juxtaposition of feeling a sense of familial belonging in a place where I am truly a stranger and foreigner.
I came back to a moment I didn’t write about, when we were on some major highway. My aunt was driving and we came to a stop at a red light. There was a sign posted next to the road that read: “Cell-free zone.” My mom and I assumed that this meant there was free wifi available, and so we were ready to share our texts and memories with friends and family back in the States.
“Oh no,” my aunt had said. “That sign means you keep everything hidden from view. This is where they break your car windows and steal your valuables right out of your hands.” We were, of course, shocked and never took our cell phones out in public for the rest of the trip.
But that moment came back to me today, surveying the evidence that someone was willing to risk arrest for what was no more than $5 in change in a random driveway at an unremarkable house in Reno. This isn’t exactly the apocalypse. But it’s the opening scene to one of the disutopian stories I read once where the rights of the common person erode while a very real and physical threat devastates the institutions upon which our daily lives and values are founded.
I want to be optimistic and believe that we will be OK. That I’ll go back to being the girl who rides her bike a lot, and who writes all the words that do not matter. Perhaps.
Instead, I choose to believe that the lettuce seedlings I’ve planed—that sprouted just today— are the better metaphor. Life won’t be easy, but those little seeds are willing to fight through cold and wind in the tiny greenhouse I bought. Perhaps, too, will we.
I’m not soliciting donations. Take care of yourself and your families. I would be so honored if you follow my story, though. I publish weekily-ish.
Love and health to you all. <3