The headlines announce the big news of the day as “Phase Two of the Quarantine”. That seems to me to be good marketing. Don’t get our hopes up just two days after Liberation Day that another kind of liberation is due next week. Just a spot of light. Restaurants can serve takeout, we can walk in parks again, and people can visit family (and only family), but it’s still a lockdown. I’m fielding requests, by the way, for becoming a sibling from whomever is interested. Or an uncle, if that makes more biological sense.
The bad news is that barbers and hairdressers won’t reopen until June. I foresee a run on hair-dye and elastic ties. At least those are less essential than hand sanitizer and masks if they become scarce. I dug out a few photos to see how long locks served my image in hippy days. Not so bad. Of course, a few other things have changed since then, so I don’t really expect a return of the brown-haired, crazy kid of my youth. But shaggy locks might be fun. I mean the only people who will see them are survivors of homemade buzz-cuts and others with spontaneous hair-dos.
Today was a bright and sunny day. My neighbor Marianna and her daughter have been scrubbing everything in sight all weekend. On my way down the outside stairs, we greeted as I became level with her balcony, which was her scrubbing project for today.
“You’ve been cleaning a lot, lately. Is that spring cleaning or because of the pestilence?”
“It’s because we’ve been locked inside for weeks and can’t stand it anymore!”
Her beautiful, little black Labrador, Pongo, came out to check on the conversation.
“I know what you mean. If I felt up to it, I’d have this yard weeded and trimmed by now good enough to win awards in some garden magazine.”
Not really. Instead I complained about having taken too large a morning dose of natural medicine, but the subtext was clear enough. Lovely to be home, wonderful to cook and share time with family (if you live with one) and neighbors (on their balconies), but all this good old-fashioned homeyness is getting on our nerves.
“Move a chair into the sun and take a nap,” she suggested.
“Exactly what I came down to do.”
The sun was roasting hot. It felt great, but I didn’t sleep. Instead, I thought of what to shop for when it was the slow time at the supermarket.
By and by that time arrived. I felt goofy as hell, my right foot hurt, but I’d been looking forward to this since Saturday and nothing was going to delay it further. I hobbled into the street, masked, and carrying a golden shopping bag.
I have a calcification on my right foot at the site of a long-ago fracture. Finding footwear soft enough to accommodate it is tricky, so when I saw a friend wearing shoes whose uppers were essentially a leather mesh, it impressed me. As warmer weather approached I found them online and ordered a pair. Thing is, even though they are neutral in style, they are made for women, and the largest size available was one (metric) notch down from what I wear. But my friend had encouraged me to order one size too small anyway, because they stretch to fit your foot, lumps and all, rather quickly. So I did.
I started wearing them around the house sometime last week. They were perfect; comfortable and noncompetitive with the misshapen aspects of my feet. When I went out on Saturday, intending to go no further than Metà, I wore them onto the street. Then I slowly discovered Liberation Day, which took me all over town. The shoes seemed fine. But when I changed into walking shoes for my nighttime skulk, I could barely move for the pain under my right toe. I figured it would stretch out, but all it did was hurt a tiny bit less.
I’ve since found trigger points to alleviate the problem, but it will take days of massage and patience before I can walk up to standard. So, today, sick of my own cooking, tired of looking at weeds but not yet in good enough form to do anything about them, and having the thing I look most forward to, a walk, turn into a small exercise in self torture, it was a mighty effort not to fall into a sump of self-pity.
My second outing was after shops reopened. I went to the herbalist who had found herself a spot of sun and sat on a curb reading.
“Good book?”
She took awhile to recognize me behind my mask.
“I don’t know, I just started, but these days who cares? I’ll read anything.”
Further on I passed a man jockeying his place in line to better take advantage of the sun. The ladies waiting to enter Casalinda where all spaced to wait in sunlight, and so were the several waiting at Metà on Signorelli. Too many of each, in fact. I decided to take my sore foot home and try again tomorrow. On the way I passed two fellows on different parts of the street who had found tiny circles of sunlight in which to bask their faces.