After being a click ‘n shipper for a year, last week I actually visited the post office. Bainbridge sports two post offices, one tiny and the other small. Just one person at a time may enter the tiny post office. But a line forms at the other – six customers and two workers in a small room, sort of spaced out, not really a crowd – but being there made me antsy.
And made me think about crowds, about how they used to be associated with exciting things: travel, performances, big cities, the Women’s March. How readily we accepted being close to an unknown person – and how long ago that seems.
And now I wonder what it will be like as things open up, will we ever again be comfortable with crowds? Will we come to a point where crowded moments – the cluster that forms as people wait to disembark the ferry, an airport waiting area, the aisle of a movie theatre after the show, the crush of a rattling, stuffy subway car! – will be normal again?
What do you most look forward to in our future? I love the very thought of a hug (or maybe a crowded hug) with grandchildren and their parents. Increasing acceptance of public crowds will mark a milestone in our COVID-19 journey – this one toward joy!
her spirits rose... 
I hope that’s the green man of science holding everyone so confidently up in your entertaining painting. Crowds have certainly changed their meaning for us, and I think it will take a long time – if ever – to regain our nonchalant acceptance of being surrounded. I think (and I have been lucky with being able to hug the grandchildren, or that would be the very first thing I’d want) that I will like to be able to pass people on the street and see their smiles, or their frowns, or whatever expression they feel like sharing. I miss faces. And I miss that casual connection with humanity in all its oddities that seems so muffled right now.
Amen!
I feel the same way! Honestly, I am looking forward to visiting with my whole extended family at some point. I’m in no hurry to get back into crowds.
It will be wonderful to see our families, won’t it?
We have visited with some nearby vaccinated friends and it’s felt good. Still waiting for older son and wife to be vaccinated–we haven’t seen them in over a year. And about crowds–they’ve always made me uneasy and this quiet year has intensified that feeling..
And now I’d like an artist’s statement re that painting! )I love it.)
Aah – the little fellow holding up all the reference people (photos we were to draw from) from my class! I have no idea how the set up happened. Began just doing the assignment – but the sad lady seemed to want to be in front of the with it girl – and then the meditative guy held up almost everybody but he needed a little help from Mrs Doubtfire from an ad in the New Yorker – and then well, the green muscle guy just happened. All of them began as much more straightforward photos. Who knows? But was really fun. Thanks for noticing!