Shrinking world
I have begun to think of the pandemic as a distortion effect, a caricature, a funhouse mirror. Everything it does now in the endless During Times already happened in the Before Times, but now more so, exaggerated to a breaking point. I had the thought periodically Before that my life was small and tightly circumscribed - parent and prepare, commute, work, commute, parent and prepare, frantic leisure moments, sleep, repeat, and once in a while on a weekend go on an outing, all in a total space maybe 4 miles wide - but now my life is more so. I commute to another room in the house and my outings are down the hill of our street and back, all in a total space maybe 4 blocks wide; otherwise all continues apace within my immediate small sphere. Of course the solar system in which my small sphere orbits has become far more erratic. Perhaps things will break down dramatically - I can lose sleep thinking of it; death, layoffs, foreclosure, moving in with a parent, etc. Perhaps things will continue to degrade but remain largely the same - paycuts, more work and stress, more DIY house maintenance, etc.
The latest degradation: my neighbors across the street are moving away. They are what I now consider a young couple, creeping up on mid 30s. They’re nice. Loosely similar to my wife and I - not leftists but sympathetic, and without the baggage. Not punk but sympathetic, and without the baggage. Not parents but sympathetic, and without the baggage. They’ve been out of work now for months, layed off pre-pandemic and truly out of luck as the lockdowns rolled in. We’ve had a lot of conversations across the street and the occasional beer and conversattion across a smaller large distance, mostly venting about stresses and shared moral outrage, with a bit of pleasantries around the edges about hiking and art and music and our personal histories of economic uncertainty.
My kids know them and like them - my kids made a newspaper consisting of op-eds (‘there are too many fireworks set off in our neighborhood!’) and poems about the moon and bats and gave these neighbors one of the two printed copies - and they seem to like my kids in turn. My two year old almost daily suggests, grinning ear to ear at breakfast, “I know! We could take some cereal to our NEIGHBORS!” Now they’re leaving, moving out of state because a job came through.
They told me in somber voices. I’d stepped out to get cilantro from our garden to spruce up the dinner tacos and called hello across the street and they’d done the same then said “we have some news” and I knew right away. “What is it?” “I got a job.” No smile, voice slow, serious, like “I got pneumonia.” I didn’t want to be right. “Hey congratulations, I’m happy for you!” “Well, thanks, but it means we have to move.” I am never right about anything good. “I’m very sorry to hear that, we’ll miss you two!” “We’ll miss you too, you’ve been great neighbors. We don’t really want to move I just really need the job!” “I get it, we’ve moved a lot too, being broke and needing work will do that.” “Exactly.” I excused myself - my family and their dinner was waiting - and said we’d talk again soon.
I quietly told my wife in the kitchen and her face fell. After we ate we told the kids. The big ones cried, the seven year old longest and hardest. The two year old didn’t understand, and still won’t once their house is empty, though I expect tears at some point.
Our family’s world is small, now more so for our departing neighbors. I hug my kids and think soon our world will shrink further still with the steadily growing numbers of the dead.