Last year I listened to this entertaining but short-run podcast hosted by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani. The show served not only to raise money for charity, but it also documented their experiences in pandemic lockdown. They termed this entire COVID timeframe experience “The Weirds” and honestly, I couldn’t think of any better way to describe it. Almost.

Since I’m from New England, I think the best way to term this time is The Wicked Weirds. Wicked, in our local parlance, is a synonym for “very”.

I remember when I first moved to France. I was barely 16 years old and getting to know the whole European “bises” culture on the fly (nobody told me about it before I left! The bises mean a kiss on each cheek in greeting and farewell…something that I adjusted to fairly quickly. And this method of salutation holds here in Italy as well…at least that’s how it used to be. Now, it’s more of an elbow bump. Often you see a lot of over-exaggerated waving from two people standing about two meters apart. No one is kissing anyone at all unless it is someone with whom you share your bubble. That’s time in The Weirds.

Now that literal Groundhog Day has come and gone, I’ve been thinking about what I was doing this time last year. We were all on the precipice of COVID saturation, and in this moment I had my second visitor coming into town. My brother arrived in mid-February, and while the visit started off normal enough, the second half quickly became stunted. We opted to forego train tickets booked for Florence out of fear for COVID (instead we explored a near-deserted Bomarzo Park of Monsters). Further, since we are “non-dependent children” of a retired airline pilot, I fretted that he would not be able to depart Italy on a standby status as he normally travels. Indeed, the flights filled up quickly as people in Italy crowded onto planes departing the country out of fear for the new virus. 

The way my brother got back home again happened in a bit of a rush. He grabbed a one-way ticket to Amsterdam two hours before the plane was to depart- I dumped him at the aiport and wished him luck. You could tell the continent was closing down for business and it felt very strange. Luckily, from Amsterdam he was able to hop on a flight home to Boston and (most importantly) did not come in contact with the virus. Last February he was my last visitor in Rome. Everyone else—at least three other planned visitors with tickets in hand—they never made it out. Such a strange time.

I’m not complaining for all of this because in the grand scheme of things, I am grateful for each and every person who is still wandering around like me. As I blink my eyes and look at the calendar, I am bewildered that this is 2021. And the silver lining that I can see as a horizon is that vaccines are a thing—it’s now just a matter of achieving mass inoculation. I’m already sick of the phrase “shots in arms” but I will never grow tired of hearing news when another person mentions that they’ve gotten theirs. 

Like sudden omission of kissing as a greeting and farewell—there are other casualties of the pandemic that now seem commonplace. In Rome you now have a proliferation of takeout coffee cups. This was more of an anomaly in the past—”to go” might only mean that you see someone walking by with a tray of plastic espresso cups in hand, delivering them to a portiere or something. Now, since bars and cafes practice social distancing, so many more people are getting takeaway drinks. As for me, I am opting to enjoy the bulk of my coffees at home. Any added opportunity for infection makes me hesitant to wander into a bar or really anywhere else.

Even more ubiquitous than the piles of paper coffee cups are the cast-off facemasks. Like winter’s lost single gloves, they litter the streets and even monuments (!). And like the plastic rings that bind a six-pack of soda, I am now cutting the elastic bands of any old disposable masks for fear of the harming unsuspecting animals. Is this appropriate or largely irrational? Maybe it’s both in the time of The Weirds.

My coping strategies for moving through this period remain largely the same. At home I wear lipstick while cooking all kinds of new recipes since this makeup item is now rendered useless behind a mask. Now, I’m not exactly wearing any of my evening dresses around the house (yet) but I do see an impressive reduction in the things I “need” during this period. 

Apart from that, life can often look like a deployment. You focus on the tasks of the day and put your effort into that. You don’t focus so much on the finish line because—well you don’t know when it is going to be. And if you have ever been on a deployment, then you know that the date is likely to change anyway. Especially if one night they suddenly serve you lobster. 

Part of me is writing this because I am projecting out to next February. I’m trying to balance realism with a suspicion that this period will have a lingering effect. Kind of like how I marvel at the massive stocking up of canned goods that my parents used to do. It’s a scar left upon them from living so much closer to an era when the country had far less. I reflected on this just weeks ago while I was home—and finally disposing of canned goods that were a decade beyond the expiration date. Don’t tell Dad, but nobody was going to eat that can of B&M brown bread.

So next year. Will it still be The Weirds? I don’t know. I don’t even want to think about it. If anything, this stretch of time has continued to teach me to be thankful for what we’ve all got in front of us right now. But I certainly will be happy when I can once again see the full face of other people. A bit more human touch and a return to some wonderful cultural normality like les bises or a wandering into a neighborhood bar for a coffee in a proper tazzina. That day is coming. If not tomorrow than another day soon.