A March Ago | Design for Mankind
Our small world becomes smaller, a collective rejiggering. We learn to cut our own hair.
Then comes an election, polarizing because it is, and also because we need it to be. We have spent eight months swimming in ambiguity: fighting furloughs, starting sourdough. For many, it feels easier to answer which candidate is on the right side of history than to question if we ourselves are.
We thrum with anger. Over cancel-culture or accountability, depending upon to which front page we subscribe. We draw lines over protests or riots, victims or survivors, gaslighting or falsehoods. The Internet falls in step, or perhaps leads the charge? Diamond hands on Reddit, monoliths in Utah. Daily, scandals dot our news feeds. We’re not getting better, the headlines say.
In a world in which we can no longer speak to each other around a shared meal, we opt to speak about each other instead.
But today, it is sunny and cool. The tire swing sways from an oak I’ve been told is nearly 150 years old. The neighbor kids are here, cheeks ruddy from the wind, feet bare with dirt. I’m rocking a 5-month-old baby girl as she sleeps on my chest, her fingers curled and holding tight to something I cannot know.
How’s the baby? they chime. Is she asleep? Can we hold her?
I’ve wondered before what I’ll tell her about the year she was born, about the time everyone pulled away, into their homes and their choices and their selves. About how, a March ago, on a morning like today, the world shut its door, held its breath, and we watched it all happen through windows opened wide.
I wonder how long it might be before we find the words to speak about it with voices unmasked.
Not yet, I think. When she wakes, is what I say.
