Category: Lockdown

I woke earlier than usual this morning and worried that nothing had happened yet to provide me with a subject for Day Two’s blog post. Success! In the space of a few hours, most of them asleep, I’d managed to transfer my anxiety from something over which I have no influence (the virus) to something totally within my control (what you are now reading). The mind is remarkable in its pliability. As a complimentary extra, the benefits of yesterday’s shiatsu survived the night, a tiny thing for the world at large, but large in my tiny world.

The day unfolded slowly. I normally take a morning walk, which gets blood running and nerves working. This morning, with all my “extra” time I indulged in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Guardian. By the time I finished, I was afraid to leave the house.

I didn’t leave until afternoon.

The town was even quieter today. Food establishments are allowed to be open only between 06:00 and 18:00, on the philosophy, I suppose, that the evening meal is that most likely to cause crowds of people in close proximity. A lot of bars and pastry shops have opted to close full time. One of my favorites posted a handwritten note from the owner that said, in essence, “In order to comply with the new directive, and for the good of the larger community, and because it’s just easier this way, we’ll be closed until it’s safe to open again. In the meantime, I’ll be hanging out at home.” Many more have taken this tact without explaining it. Some I have never seen closed in the more than four years I’ve lived here are deserted as a cave. Good for you, I say to them, you deserve the break. I imagine they would rather be making an income.

I breezed into Metà for bananas. What last night was an impromptu response to social distancing rules by creative customers, is today reenforced by stanchions with signs and masking tape on the floor. This makes everyone a bit grave and concerned. It felt like a bank in the States, and no one here is used to that kind of hyper organization. The young fellow with the blue eyes was checking, I don’t know his name.

“How’s it going?” I asked. “A little more complicated than before?”

“Too complicated. We have to keep track of how many people come in, who goes out, where to stand, when to wear gloves.”

A woman half entered, then looked up and laughed.

“Okay if I come in?”

“Yeah, we’re allowed fifteen, and it’s at six,” the blue-eyed checker told her, shaking his head. Then to me, “We gotta do it, not just because of the directive, it’s right, it’s necessary. And a pain,” and he shrugged in Italian.

Corrado slipped in.

“How’s it going?”

He laughed. “Normal, and…” we finished the sentence together “…these days, normal is fantastic.”

Next stop, the pharmacy. I passed Anna the ceramicist on the way. She was waiting two meters behind a man waiting to go into a tobacco store. I waved. She sighed and pointed to the store.

“Are you still in your studio during the day?” I asked.

“I am, but nobody else. The streets are all people I know, and they don’t buy.” She shrugged Italian and pointed again at the shop. “One at a time. The place is tiny.” She smiled apologetically as if the entire country were somehow her fault. I tried to bump elbows, but bumping elbows was yesterday. Today, it’s separation by a meter, and elbows are too intimate.

I continued on to the pharmacy. Just as I reached it, I met an American friend on the street. She introduced me to a friend of her’s, an Italian living in New York, recently returned. He put his hand out, I put out my elbow, he remembered and let his hand fly away. We tried to talk, but couldn’t decide on a language. He seemed flustered by how completely his culture had changed overnight.

A woman in a white turtleneck (oddly called dolcevita, here) doubling as a mask, stood facing the door.

“We wait here?” I said, respecting my distance.

She nodded. I approached the door to see the newly printed sign. Only two clients allowed at a time, it read. I fell into line a meter upstream from the lady in the turtleneck, and we waited.

A neighbor who works for my dentist passed.

“Are you guys open these days?”

“Only for pain.”

“I have an appointment tomorrow for a cleaning.”

“Nobody called?”

“Nobody.”

“Strange. But…” and she finished her sentence by waving her finger.

Once inside, the pharmacists were all adorned with masks and latex gloves. I felt like I’d stepped into a Marx Brothers’ film, I don’t know why. It’s a good thing I didn’t try to explain that, they would have never understood.

Shiatsu this afternoon knocked me for a loop. Michele must have released some deep-seated toxins or attitudes or fears or something. I could barely get off the table, and once off, barely stand.

“You want some water?”

“Pl-pl-please, thunt you. Thank. Thank you.”

After sitting for awhile, I adventured the stairs down to the little alley the physiotherapy studio is located on and pointed my nose towards home. After what seemed like days of wending my way past planets and moons, I arrived at my grey gate, crawled upstairs, took off my shoes, crept downstairs, and fell onto the sofa for a 45 minute state of unconscious bliss.

I woke trembling all over. Nothing severe or even uncomfortable, but still intense. I lay there waiting for it to pass. It intensified. I got up, reshuffled the pillows I’d strewn about in my eagerness to nap, and crawled back upstairs to check email.

A dear friend who has been suffering frequent unexplainable seizures for upwards of seven years, and who had recently enjoyed a several months reprieve, wrote that the relapse that began two weeks ago continues, that his brain can’t seem to get back to being “back”. I was devastated.

I checked the news, as if that would brighten my evening. After ten or fifteen minutes of heartrending reports of disease, neglect, fear, stupidity, and the tiniest glimmers of hope, another message came through from a friend advising that I stock up on food, since we’re all going to be eating dinners in for the next three weeks at a minimum, and are advised to stay home as much of the rest of the day as possible.

So, I put on a sweater with the hope that it would stem my trembling (I have great fondness for, and faith in, sweaters), donned my pea coat for good measure, wound my golden shopping bag around my left hand like a benign set of brass knuckles, and set out for what I still call Metà (our supermarket) even though the chain changed its name to Pam (which lacks music) almost a year ago, to purchase a few simple necessities. It was after seven, not much would be happening, so I’d be well within the guidelines for not spreading the virus by hanging out in crowded spaces.

I go to Metà for food and drink and sundries, sure. I also go for a social pick me up. The guys who work the store are all, each in their own way, kind, funny, and helpful. Even listening to them joke with each other improves my spirits, although I understand not a word. I swung around back to get a carton of rice milk, stepping gingerly to avoid the almost invisible piles of dust the fellow with the brown beard and glasses was sweeping into, then towards frozen food in front for a couple of veggie burgers. My first attempt at extracting a package caused the neighboring chickpea burgers to tumble. The sweeper instantly picked it up for me and set it back in place, then held the door while I retrieved my intended targets. I thanked him. He gave a little bow.

A friend passed, I waved and called her name.

“I was thinking of leaving for a couple of weeks, but now with the lockdown…” she shrugged.

“You’re American, does the ban apply?”

“Good point,” she said, and said again.

“Where were you headed?”

“Long story. Turkey. I’ll have to look into it.”

Maria Luce joined the stretched line for checkout, everyone at one-meter spacing. She was wrapped in scarves up to her eyes, so I had to stare a bit trying to recognize her. She lowered the scarf so she could smile, and waved. I returned it. We both instantly felt safer.

Corrado was checking. He’s one of the two franchise owners, late twenties, and sometimes a bit moody, but never in a way that is preoccupied or rude. We have a routine. I ask – how’s it going. He answers – normal. Then we laugh. Tonight I got an extra line in,

“Well nowadays normal is fantastic.”

“Surprising”, he added, and “Don’t we wish!” And we laughed.

“Buona serata”, I said.

“Same to you”, he replied, and “Arrivaderci, grazie” and “buona serata” again. It’s like saying goodbye to a dear friend for a year’s journey to Katmandu every time you leave a shop here.

The streets home were almost empty, the few of us that were out skirted each other to remain a meter apart, and smiled as we wove our ways past.

We may have fewer reasons to smile as the days come, but I hope we never forget how vital it is that we do anyway. I arrived home tremble-free and moving more effortlessly than I have in a year or more.