Covid Notes a la mexicana

The jacarandas have begun to bloom, a reliable sign that a year has passed in Mexico City. What we thought would be the lost spring of 2020 extended and left us in spring again. —Lavín

Jacarandas, Mexico City

In Denver, tulips and daffodils bloom, battered but not bowed by the usual April snows. In April 2020 we were locked down. The city was quiet like it hadn’t been for decades. This April, the hum of traffic, planes overhead, shouts of ball games in the park are all back.

Lavín has a list of learnings from this experience. Cadena describes the mask refusers. I’m on board with both.

The friends we have chosen to see are those we would take with us to a desert island. —Lavín

I hosted friends for Easter dinner. In my house. People besides my husband and myself. Without masks. I almost panicked and called it off. But we are all vaccinated and everyone is fine. The first people we shared a meal with were those we’ve shared meals with for forty years.

 Being locked in can cause us to adopt new forms of anti-social life. —Lavín

When all in our former coffee group were vaccinated, we met at our usual mid-morning time in our usual coffee shop. The place was crowded, which made us uncomfortable. And loud, which gave us headaches. We strained to hear, to make cogent responses. We declined to meet again, are conversationally out of shape.

We seldom went out before and are even more out of practice now. If this continues, we may not recover what remains of our sociability.

I won’t visit the unvaccinated, family or friends. Such a risk at my age would be foolhardy. Once again, the world divides into two kinds of people. Cadena, writing from Hungary, where he teaches, delineates one type, those who won’t wear masks:

 It isn’t hard to identify them…They continue having parties…leave trash everywhere, ignore traffic rules… —Cadena

U.S. public health experts have concluded that observing the mandates—masks, distancing—would have delivered us from this contagion sooner, would have saved lives. The people saying masks restrict their freedom are really saying they don’t want to be inconvenienced in order to protect the aged, the vulnerable, the Hispanic, native and black populations most susceptible to this disease.

…treat disadvantaged people as inferiors…take refuge in aggression or privilege to evade the consequences of their actions, can’t tolerate feeling questioned… —Cadena

The Cadena list goes on for a long irritable paragraph that is not long enough. I have items to add. Those who are self-absorbed. Those who can’t see beyond their own noses.

Daffodils & Tulips in the yard

We age faster in the pandemic. —Lavín.  

I’ve been sitting over an hour, bent toward the laptop screen, lost in words. Rising, my knees creak, my neck crackles, my hips whine. Before the pandemic, we went to the gym three times a week. I did a mile and a half on the treadmill. Now my hips sometimes stop me walking at four blocks.

If we celebrated the shortening of distances through tools like Zoom, now we push against the restrictive tyranny of the screen. —Lavin

I attended a Zoom reading hosted in New York, featuring poets in Canada and Colorado, and a fiction writer in New England. I went without video, allowing me to get up and stretch, pace during readings I didn’t care for, make notes during those I did. No immediate audience reaction or interaction. No in-the-flesh immediacy. No bringing a book to be signed. The restrictive tyranny of the screen indeed.

The vaccination of those over 60 in Mexico City has been remarkably well-organized. Accustomed to inefficiency, this achievement dazzles us. —Lavín

After the bungled first year of our U.S. response, the vaccine rollout seems to be going reasonably well. I don’t know that we’ve been dazzled by it.

Mexico City is populated by birds we didn’t know. —Lavín

There were photos months ago of wild Welsh mountain goats hanging around a deserted downtown intersection. In Denver we briefly had some of the clearest air in years. If we were gone, the wildlife native to our world would swiftly reclaim it.

…those who abandon a friendship when it’s no longer useful or an animal when it’s no longer easy to care for. It isn’t hard to identify them… —Cadena

Finally, he concludes, it isn’t the refusal of masks, but what is behind that attitude: “indifference, lack of solidarity, lack of respect for others.” Those who have lost, or never had, a sense of community. But forget them, Cadena advises. Look to those making efforts to provide community, the helpers, those we’d take to that island.

We cannot live without some form of human contact (touch). —Lavín

Lavín invites her readers to add their own learnings. I invite you to do the same.

Quotes by Mexican writers Mónica Lavín and Agustín Cadena are in my translations.