Let’s go back to the Before. Was it just six weeks ago? It was a lifetime ago. We had a houseguest, because houseguests were still a thing, and we took an overnight trip to Burlington, Vermont, because travel was still a thing. And while there, we went to no fewer than five establishments: a bar, a restaurant, another bar, a breakfast joint, a coffee shop. We hugged each other, and we sat in close quarters, we tasted each other foods, we sipped each other’s drinks.
And we sang karaoke, which is something I pretty much never did in the Before, but certainly don’t do now in the After. One of us — our houseguest — chose to sing a classic from not only Before, but from before I was born: Chicago’s “Does Anybody Know What Time It Is.”
Does anybody really know what time it is (I don’t)
Does anybody really care (care about time)
Even though I had just begun carrying a small bottle of hand sanitizer in my bag, we were still firmly in the Before. It was late, the place was a dive, and people were drinking and laughing and casually leaning over each other to grab something off the bar, to sift through the pages of songs one could sing, to share a plate of fries. The sort of stuff that we thought nothing of in the Before.
That song our houseguest sang doesn’t feel like part of the Before, though. It was about the After.
Because now there are no hours, no days, no weeks. Time is doing something so strange — it is almost flattening, right along with the curve that public health experts have been talking about. The last time I experienced anything like this was back in the early days of parenting, but as my friend Lisa pointed out to me, then the days were long and the years were short. Now it is the opposite. A month ago feels like years ago, and yet suddenly it’s garbage day again, and wasn’t it just garbage day yesterday, or was that the day before? One thing is the same, though — my life will always feel clearly demarcated, just as it was after I gave birth. We’ll never be in the Before again.
If so I can’t imagine why (no, no)
We’ve all got time enough to cry
We don’t yet know what the After will be. Right now is simply Now, and we talk about that a lot — what our lives look like Now. Now, we nonessentials who are staying home measure out our days in terms of 20-second hand-washing stints, 20 times a day. Now, we gauge whether it’s morning or evening by whether we’re drinking coffee or wine. Now, we mark the days off on the calendar till the next time we go to the grocery store, and once there, eyeball the number of feet between us and the next patron. Now, we give each other wide berths on the sidewalks, glancing at each other above our face masks, hoping our crinkling eyes make it clear we’re friendly. Now, we watch the tally of confirmed cases rise and the stock market fall, and somewhere in there, we daydream about the After. What will it look like? And when will it arrive? Nobody really knows, but everybody really cares.
That houseguest, the one who so presciently sang about time, was the last non-family member I touched, back in the Before. I had the beginnings of a cold, but I was certain it wasn’t COVID-19, so as we said goodbye, we hugged. Why was I certain? No good reason. Did he catch it? Yes, of course he did, because that’s how viruses spread. And Now, six weeks later, I shudder to think about how that could have played out. What if he had gotten terribly sick? What if he had landed in the hospital, or worse? I never worried about a little case of the sniffles in the Before. I have no idea how I will stop worrying in the After.
But the After isn’t here yet. All we have now is Now. My next-door neighbor’s daughter, who is 11, used to run toward me when we appeared in our driveways in the mornings, arms outstretched, ready for a daily hug before we got in our cars and went to Before places like work and school. When we see each other Now, we hug ourselves at the same time. I blow a kiss to her from behind my mask. Two months ago, our lives looked nothing like this. What will our lives look like two months from Now?
Naomi Shulman’s work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Yankee Magazine, as well as on NEPR and WBUR. Follow her on Twitter: @naomishulman.