THE STORM UPON US
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Last night, March 21, 2020, we watched a middling movie in the room above our kitchen – me and Sam and the kids huddled in the newly ominous dark. We have a screen up there. We bought it from Frank, our retired film prof neighbour. He decided to sell a few years back after a city by-law officer came by one evening, threatening to lay noise violation charges because we were out in Frank’s backyard watching Avatar in 3D. There were a bunch of us making a bit too much noise, all drinking from the same bottle.
Up on that same screen last night, people moved repeatedly and casually through a busy New York City. They were flirting shamelessly with each other, rubbing shoulders, standing in each other’s breath. Like science fiction is how it felt. Blade Runner 2020. I looked in the flickering light at my kids, trying to read them, trying to figure out what I might say that was useful and calming after the credits had rolled.
It’s sure as hell not how I pictured life unfolding here when I was a kid of 16 in Oxford, England, excited about this move my dad had just engineered from rural Oxfordshire all the way to the shores of a great Lake. A middle-aged real estate agent? That’s how I end up? Come on, not a chance. That’s about what I would have said (with a much thicker accent). Because you can’t imagine that far ahead. You don’t know any of the curves that 40 years are going to throw your way.
But I swear it feels like there have been more changes in the last two weeks than in those four decades. Ten days ago, Cheri and I were planning for our spring real estate season. We had eight or nine new listings planned, and a couple of dozen buyers working with us to find something nice. Just last Friday, Sam and I had a guy into our house to price up new windows. We were at the gym every day. Sharing soup. Shaking hands with complete strangers.
Way back on the 11th we had a family dinner at Bella Bistro, after dropping off some birthday presents for my mum. That seems today like the most alien outing I can imagine. Something from another century. I’ve no idea at all when we might be able to repeat it. The plan going forward is to order some groceries online for my parents and then try to sterilize the canned goods on their front lawn before driving off with not much more than a wave. Mum and dad likely won’t venture further than the end of the drive for months.
It’s amazing, isn’t it? And then it’s fucking horrifying and then fascinating and then suddenly it’s even more horrifying as more news rolls in. I have to stop going on Twitter. It’s Stephen King 24/7.
My business partner and I shut down our real estate practice indefinitely this week. We feel that showing houses or listing them is just dangerous and stupid, and should be avoided except in the most extreme of circumstances. And yet so many in the business soldier on, talking about hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, as if quite miraculously they make the world safe again for intimate contact in the tight hallways of that elevated Bayridge bungalow, or leaning against someone’s car in the driveway on Mowat, offering around a pack of Starburst. In a real estate ad yesterday, there was a shout-out down near the bottom to the vital frontline workers who are keeping us safe, and the hypocrisy in that was about as appealing to me as a sudden bloom of acne.
But anyway. Today we stood in our backyard at noon - me and Sam, and Felix and Angela, Emberly and Al, a blur of kids. The fences between our three houses blew down in a November storm. The plan was to replace them this spring, as soon as the ground thawed. But at least this way we can see each other. We kept our distance and I kinda scuffed at the dirt as if to check it was still there, the earth, beneath us. We talked about the news (but not much, not in front of the kids) and about the sun on our faces and about NYC and about our poor doctors and our walking routes, about how it would have been worse heading into this mess in November. We talked groceries and about baking bread and about our stores of dry goods. Nothing thrilling in that, and a lot of it desperately mundane and all touched with sadness. But there were some rueful laughs too, and some sun-hit smiles, and everything seemed mostly okay after a while, and I wished right then our little spread-out gathering could go on all afternoon.
