Remembering How

Dusting off my debit card, I insert it in the slot below the keypad and wait to be told what to do next.

“Enter PIN”.

My brain begins the internal scanning process through the stacks of saved login codes, passwords and other access data stored in what I know is an overloaded hippocampus.

Nothing.

I keep sifting, hovering my left hand over the buttons on the reader’s keypad, hoping that some muscle memory will kick in to get me out of this one. The woman six feet behind me in line shifts her weight impatiently onto her other leg and tightens her grip on the handles of the basket holding her soup cans and salsa. Still nothing. I hit the red “cancel/override” key and the transaction moves forward. Mastercard doesn’t always allow this, so I’m grateful and eager to get out of there and on my way.

It was an emergency that led me into a retail setting for the first time in eight months (the details don’t matter, but I will say that it was sociologically interesting to find the laxatives section nearly cleaned out in a rural dollar store. Must be something in the water we’re drinking ‘round here, or the pandemic’s impact has moved some of our neighbors in this tiny community to a different level…or will eventually “move” them. I’m trying to be delicate here). For the lion’s share of these past thirteen months, Patrick has been our household’s canary in the coalmine, running errands, masking up and stepping across diverse retail thresholds to fetch the item or two we forgot to add to our curbside order. I’ve been tending the home fires with a limited orbit to and from the office one day a week, not taking on the burden of talking through fabric and plexiglass barriers to buy a can of crushed tomatoes or vodka. I’m not accustomed to the new way of doing business from a physical and logistics perspective. “Weird” doesn’t begin to articulate it.

But on that Saturday morning, forced back into the face-to-face consumer dynamic, I was playing out a scene from “Awakenings” with a modified plot twist that sent my mind reeling in the direction of a post-lockdown reality. What else have I forgotten how to do and be in the company of others? We don’t shake hands or lick our thumbs to turn a page in a book or leave the house without our vanilla-scented hand sanitizer for after we’ve touched a door handle. I’m sure I’ll be just awful at re-engaging. You should know that I tend to learn life’s most important lessons in the presence of strangers and have come to keep an apology of some sort rehearsed and ready to go in my pocket. That strategy has kept most of my interactions with others pleasant or at least civil. But in what new ways will I test their patience when I self-release back into the wild of a more communal existence? I can’t be the only one who feels a bit rusty on the basics of social convention. Right? (uh-oh…crickets).

I’ve leaned heavily on those once-weekly office-based contacts with my coworkers, though we rarely see each other, spending the bulk of our workdays behind the closed doors of our respective offices. We venture out to use the restroom, retrieve copies from the printer and maybe get hot water from the common kitchen area. Other than that, we’re compartmentalized bees in a sparsely populated hive. When we do meet, making eye contact is required rather than preferred as we’ve all learned to shift the bulk of our nonverbals to above the mask line. I pour as much expression as I can into that narrow strip of facial space and still feel my lips shaping into familiar expressions of surprise or disgust or concern. Remember when we didn’t have to work that hard to be understood? Will our mouths move the way they always have when we can at last reveal our faces in full to one another? When was the last time you effectively wrinkled your nose to emphasize disapproval or when registering an unpleasant odor without having to put words behind it? The meaning in a raised eyebrow still lands well, thank heaven, and brings the message home with it. So, I won’t have to re-learn everything.

I’ve got one dose of Pfizer’s best making tracks through my immune system and have almost taken to crossing off the days till the second one. Wednesday, April 21 has been marked as my own Pandemic Independence Day (the two week anniversary of that second shot) and comes with a list of “hey, not so fast” recommendations for navigating my way back into a physically gathered society. After all the effort I put into making those cloth masks, I’m still rather invested in wearing them until…until it’s even safer not to. I am willing to embrace more than a bit of awkward engagement as that orbit of mine gradually widens to include my fellow human beings in public settings. Soon, maybe I’ll be the one to pick up the pizza after work, walk right in and up to the counter with that debit card of mine, hoping that override key works. Patrick has more than earned a break.

Of course, some of you have been circulating throughout this strange time far more than I have and I’m grateful for your nonjudgmental acceptance of my experience. Can we continue to be kind and patient with one another during the next iteration of our shared pandemic adjustment period? I sense that collectively we’re sitting on a submerged mountain of unaddressed anxiety, delayed grieving, frustration and who knows what other unfinished business. To be real, we’ve probably been managing that for the better part of our adult lifetimes, but…not like this. Not with this much volume and intensity. I think of the families in our hospice care who visited through glass and didn’t get to hold their loved one’s hands in those final moments of living. Remote graduation ceremonies and weddings, pushing the pause button on so many life events that hinged on being together and laughing in one place. Hugging and touching the people in our lives with unscheduled and unencumbered regularity. For many of us, it will be strange and wonderful and bittersweet to move forward. Remember…kindness.

Yesterday, in the cool bright sun of a most-anticipated day, my sister-in-law Molly and I watched as fully-vaccinated Patrick hugged his fully-vaccinated mom for the first time in thirteen months. Joanne is a nearly a foot shorter than he, and she folded right into his broad chest as if no time had passed at all. No awkward engagement, just blessed reunion and a sneak preview for Molly and me of what awaits when that second dose gives us the green light into a different but familiar world.

I may not remember my debit card’s PIN number anytime soon, but I will certainly know how to throw my arms open for that first-in-a-long-time hug. The rest will take care of itself in time.