The View From Inside

And here we are, on the first perfect day of spring, and we're inside, looking out. It's a glorious afternoon. The flowers in the graveyard where I walk Beckett every day are making shy debuts.  The air is soft, for the first time in months. The earth is waking up slowly, stretching, and even smiling in the newly-yellow sunlight.

Last year at this time, I would have been outdoors all day—walking the dog of course, but also maybe shopping, or meeting friends for dinner after a day of writing, or going to the gym, or walking through the University of Toronto campus, which is always rich with memories for me at this time of year. Or wandering around downtown, marvelling at how much healthier and happier everyone looks in spring. Or any number of other things that I previously took for granted.

Freedom of movement, freedom of interaction, freedom of association. Freedom to hug someone, or to kiss their cheek. Freedom to let children pet Beckett in the park while I exchange pleasantries about the weather with their mothers and fathers, as neighbours do.

This past March, I published a short story in a groundbreaking anthology edited by Matt Bechtel called The Dystopian States of America. Some of the finest horror writers in the business set themselves to the task of sketching fiction about life under the current regime in the United States, or its aftermath. It's not an optimistic collection by any reckoning, but neither was it intended to be prophetic, and yet here we are, trying to remain indoors while a virus that appears to defy science is literally ravaging the world.

What we are asked to do is stay at home and restrict contact with others. It's not much.

Those of us who have the privilege and the luxury of being able to do that have, to my mind, even more of a moral obligation to do so. Inexplicably, some of us find this an impossibility. Even as I look out this window, I see children playing in the schoolyard across the street. I see groups of people sauntering past on the sidewalk as though it was the spring of 2005, not the spring of 2020, and I wonder what in God's name it's going to take for people to take this seriously.

I think of my many young friends in the restaurant industry who were barely making do before, and who now have no income to speak of. I think of the teachers who are learning new ways to teach, pretty much making it up as they go along. I think of the doctors and nurses who literally put their lives on the line every time they go to work, trying to save people who may or may not have laughed off the urgings of politicians and medical professionals to stay home.

I'm fortunate to have my husband at home with me now. His work has proved to be surprisingly mobile, and it has allowed him to turn his home office into command central. Ironically, we're spending more time together of late than we ever have in the 35 years we've been married. The fact that we each have home offices means we're not on top of each other, and are in no danger of killing each other. I like to hear his voice behind his office door, and I love the sound of his muffled laughter. After three and a half decades, my heart still flutters when I hear it.

When I was a child, people said I was "too sensitive," which was turned into the ultimate derision when adults used just the right tone of voice. It meant I felt things too deeply, or took things too personally, or too seriously, and that I was too "emotional." It was all code for "feminine"—the worst, most lethal insult that could be thrown at a boy in the late-60s and 70s.

It's taken more than half a century, and some excellent therapy, to realize that being "overly sensitive" (what does "overly" mean, anyway?) isn't my problem, it's my strength. It  allows me to feel the empathy required to write what I write, and to love as I do.

But yeah, there's a cost, particularly during these days of the new plague. Like many of us, I feel all of this. And I'm frightened, as most of us are, even as I'm genuinely optimistic.

I'm taking care of the people around me. I'm reading books I'd put off reading, and watching some excellent television. I'm working on a new book of my own, and finalizing the details of a potential film adaptation of one of my novels from a brilliant indie director in Los Angeles, of whose work I have been a fan for years.

I'm writing cards and letters by hand, and reaching out to friends with whom I've been out of touch. I'm focussing on love, forgiveness, and kindness, because our thoughts become our character more than ever in a dark time.

The other day someone reached out to me from Rosedale United Church, a church I attend less frequently now than I'd like, but for whom I have great affection and solid, joyful memories of winters of volunteering at a homeless shelter. Other friends have called or written, and I find myself sending and receiving more DMs than usual on Facebook. One of my beloved sisters-of-the-heart sent flowers the other day, with likely the most incomplete sense of how much joy and colour they brought me.

Social media—so often a nightmare world populated by vindictiveness and the wanton destruction of lives—has become a lifeline: a virtual phone-tree. It reminds us that we're not alone.

I don't watch the news anymore, because I already know the situation and it's like wallowing, naked and wet, in a bathtub full of broken glass. If something happens, pro or con, I'll hear about it. I don't have any profound, philosophical insights to share about life under COVID-19 self-quarantine, so I'm just going along as best I can, trying to help out whenever I can.

And staying home.

But it I have one takeaway, it's this familiar one: love and kindness are never wasted. Also, that you never know how blessed you are, or how much you take for granted, until it is taken away from you, either by force or circumstance.

When this is over, and it will be over, that will be my new life mantra.

Be kind to each other. We'll get through this together, one way or another.