Four sweaters, five shawls, thirteen or fourteen Fair Isle hats, plus two pairs of socks. Those are the knitting projects I’ve completed in year one of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some were knit from stash, meaning yarn bought years ago, on sale, on impulse, on vacation: merino and alpaca in a heathery purple, deep green laceweight Malabrigo, a gray to deep fuchsia gradation. Sweater yarn came in the mail, purchased online at yarn.com. Fair isle hats came in kits from Sievers on Washington Island, to go with the Katie's Kep pattern from the Shetland Islands in Scotland.
There’s a surprising harmony to the colors when I pile everything together in the sunlight in the living room chair, brighter and warmer than I remember -- or is that just today's late-winter sunshine?
Day 366. Your mileage may vary on the number, depending on what day last March you count from. For me it's Friday, March 13, when I wrapped up my office computer in my fleece jacket and carried it to the car. The night before I'd had dinner with my daughter, my son and his friend -- my last meal in a (nearly empty) restaurant.
Life wound down, flattened down.
That covid curve we flattened last spring, peaked again and again, while day-to-day life seemed flat and colorless. Flat as a computer screen, dull as dinners of the same four or five home-cooked menus made week after week. (I live with a very picky eater.)
Flat also because of not wanting to cry. Or not believing in joy. Just trying to get through until dinnertime, bedtime, morning.
Day 366, ten days past my second shot. I went out to do some Saturday errands this morning -- the hold shelf at the library, the drive-up window at the bank, curbside pick-up for food. It's a beautiful day, the kind of Saturday that a year ago would have found me poking through thrift stores or buying stuff I had no idea I even needed at Marshall's or Home Goods. The past year has taken the edge off shopping. A year of looking at all the stuff already in my house has left me pretty sure I don't need more. I drove on home.
And then my daughter and I went out for a bike ride this afternoon, which means she rides her adult trike, "the best birthday present ever" from last December, while I walk in front, in back, or alongside on the grass. We were headed north down one of the streets in our neighborhood when we heard and then saw the Fitzgerald's Community Truck Concert stopped on the other side of the street a few houses in front of us. We listened to "Wild Mountain Thyme" and two more songs, with a live singer and guitar. Neighbors gathered, bike-riders got off their bikes and sat on the curb, people came out of their houses. Grown-ups, children, listening, grateful, socially distanced.
A live landscape that was not flat at all.
