Pandemic Vignettes

Albus the Dog, October 2020

Six months into the pandemic, our neighborhood in San Francisco had gone from its vibrant self — funky shops, dynamite coffee, a well-known Greek salad place, a patch of sunny greenspace — to a dispiriting bummer. The shops were boarded up. The hustle and bustle was gone. The Walgreens on the ground floor of our building was subject to daily shoplifting raids (this one had a brief bit of virality). It’s surreal to be checking out at a store, swiping my credit card for a bottle of shampoo, while someone walks out with a sack of merchandise without notice or comment. This, I was soon to understand, is just how it is now. There is a lot of desperation that drives someone to so brazenly break the law. But it’s also hard to look the cashier in the eye, see their wilted expression as one more person just walks out of the store with more dollars of product than they’ll make working their honest shift.

Our offices were closed, our apartment was small and expensive, and our neighborhood lost its luster, so when some friends organized a three weeks trip to San Diego, we decided it was time to seize the COVID zeitgeist. We cut our lease, put our stuff in storage, and decided we’d get back to SF when it made sense to. For three weeks in October I worked in an Airbnb with my friends, seated at a dining table overlooking the western sweep of the San Diego Bay through floor to ceiling plate glass windows. In the bay I could see littoral combat ships and breached submarines coming and going from the Naval Base, moving slowly through the calm waters, bearing ordnance of unfathomable megatonnage.

One day I was taking a call from the couch, airpods in, macbook on my lap, when Alice was trying to take our friend’s dog, Albie (short for Albus, as in Dumbledore) on a walk. Due to some random canine preference, he didn’t feel like going on a walk. His tactic to get out of said walk was to seek refuge on my lap.

Looking back I can’t help but be struck by the disparity in that situation and how COVID has laid bare a sad inequality I had not fully grasped until now: that of workplace freedom. While that Walgreens cashier was back in San Francisco, risking his health and physical safety, I had the freedom to decamp to sunny San Diego where we had a cedar hot tub, two levels of decks, and a view of the skyline and bay. I’ve since learned that that Walgreens has been closed.

I spent the rest of that call holding my laptop aloft with one hand and, with the other hand, running my fingers through the curling goldendoodle hair until I had to stop so that I could use my free hand to perform that most bizarre of gestures brought on by the pandemic: waving to my coworkers before signing off of Zoom.

House-sitting in Oakland, October 2020

Immediately after San Diego we flew back for one final week in the Bay Area to house-and-dog-sit for Alice’s cousin and her wife while they were in Hawaii. The house is a tastefully decorated bungalow in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood (the cousin is a talented interior decorator — you can see some pictures here) with an array of garden beds and a small guest house used as an Airbnb rental out back, in which one of our friends from the San Diego trip would be staying in for a just-in-case quarantine period before seeing her mother.

The dogs were a mix — they think German Shepherd and something else — named Lucky and an old Beagle named Dolly. They were both good dogs with the exception of two habits.

The first was raising hell when anyone from a mailworker to a neighbor had the audacity to walk by the front of the house. Dolly, the old beagle, perhaps owing to her breed’s exceptional sense of smell, was the first to detect a passerby and would crane her neck such that her nose pointed to the ceiling and give a tremendous howl. This would induce Lucky to sprint to the front window to start barking at the offending pedestrian. Not to be left behind, Dolly would follow in short order and add her own voice to the barking chorus.

The second was Dolly’s nocturnal sleeping rotation. At night, she insisted on sleeping on the bed, at the foot. The rest of the night would go like this: about an hour into our sleep, Dolly would crawl toward the head of the bed, then make her way under the covers back to the foot of the bed. Then, presumably when it became too hot for her, she would crawl back to the head of the bed, resurface from under the covers, and crawl back to the foot of the bed on top of the covers. This would happen several times over the course of the night, waking us up each time. After one night of fitful sleep Alice devised a simple solution: at night she nested Dolly in a blanket such that she looked to be wrapped in a fleecy turban which, mercifully, put a stop to the whole business.

Twice a day we’d walk the dogs around the neighborhood, admiring the bungalows and pleasant weather. After work, our friend would come in from the Airbnb out back and we’d eat dinner and then watch TV or a movie. Lucky, the shepherd mix, would jump up on the couch and curl up such that a considerable amount of her weight was leaning against me, which I took to be a sign of affection. Then the week ended and we said goodbye to all of it and headed to the East Coast. Leaving was strange and a bit wistful: though it was only a week, by the end it was as if this was the life we’d been living all along, one where we had a house in Oakland and two rambunctious dogs and one of our best friends living in the back yard.

Kenny Loggins, July 2021

Kenny Loggins watches me while I make coffee in the morning. He sees me when I’m washing dishes or chopping vegetables or cooking or getting a drink of water.

In 1979 Kenny Loggins released his third studio album, Keep the Fire. The album’s cover looks like cult propaganda: here we see Kenny Loggins, with the long flowing hair and well-kept beard of an anglicized Jesus, set against an astral background. In his hands he cradles a glowing orb. Whether he wants to give this orb to me or he’s just showing it off I don’t know. I just know I don’t want it and I’m not impressed.

Now, after moving to Atlanta, a stunningly accurate six-foot-by-six-foot plywood reproduction of said album cover sits prominently in the room just off of our kitchen.

Before it was in my kitchen it spent fifteen years covered with a sheet in my parents’ garage. Before that it was owned by some guy in the next neighborhood over from my parents’ house in South Jersey, who sold it to me for $20 when I was in high school. Before that it had been hanging from the ceiling of a now-defunct South Jersey record store. According to the guy I bought it from, that store used to pay a local artist to paint newly-released album covers. Then, when the album had grown stale, they’d rotate them down and sell them to their customers. The only remnant of the artist is the name ‘Karl’ scrawled in red on the back of the plywood.

I wish I could find Karl and tell him that the painting he made forty-odd years ago is now prominently displayed in my home in Atlanta. I know if I were him I’d get a kick out of it.

Ever since I left Atlanta in 2015, spending two years in Boston and three in San Francisco, I’ve told anyone who cared to listen that Atlanta was a special place. When we left San Francisco right after our San Diego trip, we had every intention of going back. It is, after all, where our jobs and many friends were. But life shunting between South Jersey and Raleigh was pleasant. Being near family was pleasant. Getting seasons was pleasant. Looking up houses on Zillow and not getting depressed at the price was pleasant. And so we decided to make a few trips down to Atlanta to see if we could enjoy living there. Surprise surprise it has only gotten cooler since I left. So we put in an offer on a townhome in a fun part of town. I returned.

My parents insisted, fairly, that, now that I have my own place, I ought to take all my stuff (mostly consisting of books) with me to Atlanta. Kenny Loggins was included. After a 17-hour nonstop drive in a Uhaul with my dad, we finally made it.

It took a couple months to furnish our place, what with the COVID-induced supply-chain morass. Finally we had a sofa delivered to anchor the room where the Kenny Loggins art was kept. Once the delivery guys got the couch up the stairs and set down, one of them stood looking at the painting. “Shit,” he said, “that’s a sick painting.” I explained that it was the cover of a Kenny Loggins album. “Oh,” he said, “is it any good?” That, of course, is perhaps the most fundamental question in all of this. Putting aside the impressiveness of the recreation’s detail, putting aside its striking scale, putting aside the charming story of its provenance that I will never tire of recounting to a visitor: is the album itself any good? I could only be truthful.

“No,” I told him, “there’s not a single good song on it.”

Marriage, August 2021

COVID forced us to push our wedding date twice and then it finally happened in August.

It was in Durham, North Carolina where Alice went to college and not far from where I myself had. The rehearsal dinner was in the event space of a barbecue restaurant. The wedding and reception were in an old warehouse with lunette windows and exposed brick walls that had been converted into professional offices (architects, accountants, title search firms, etc.) and an event space on the top floor.

It happened exactly how it had been described to me a million times by others who have gotten married: it was an incredible day that went by too fast. And I’ll be forever grateful that we were able to make it happen.

Looking back on it, the most striking parts of the event weren’t the vows or the first dance or the speeches or the sparkler exit (though those, of course, were special moments), but rather the way that the people in my life were all in one place for a weekend. I remember standing at the bar during the rehearsal dinner and seeing my aunt on my dad’s side talking to my cousin on my mom’s side. There’s a picture of my uncle on my mom’s side sitting down at a table otherwise full of Alice’s extended family, talking about something. The morning after the wedding my Uncle (my dad’s twin brother) was telling me he’d enjoyed talking to one of my friends from business school. I’d always felt like the people in my life were special. It was immensely gratifying to see them all with each other and enjoying each others’ company.

During the rehearsal dinner, I did my best to work the room, chatting with friends and family alike. But no matter where I was I tried to position myself such that I could keep an eye on the entrance. Because it seemed to me that, every time I had a moment to break eye contact and glance up, I saw an old friend, coming in out of the oppressive Durham heat, eager to celebrate with us.

Zion National Park, September 2021

In September Alice and I went to Zion National Park. I had been to National Parks before, but this was the first time it was more than just a day trip or passing through.

We flew into Vegas, rented a car, and made the three hour drive to Utah. It was late afternoon when we started driving through the most arid, desolate piece of land I’d ever seen. Rock, sandy earth, an occasional shrub, and high-tension power lines. The dark gathered around us before we hit Utah. We arrived at our motel in Springdale, watched an episode of something on my laptop, then went to sleep.

We woke up early. I opened the door to our motel and the magnificence of Zion canyon seemed to rush in, as if our dreary motel room was a void to be filled. Somewhere between the flat, sere, beige desert northwest of Vegas and our motel the eons of slow work by the Virgin River had started to make itself known in the craggy rock formations flanking Route 15. But in the darkened drive up I hadn’t been able to see it. Now, standing outside of our room in the early morning, there was no missing it.

Each day we were there was my ideal version of a vacation. We moved from the motel to the Zion lodge where each morning we’d wake up before 7AM, wolf down some granola bars or instant oatmeal, top off our water bottles, and head out for a morning of hiking. We would get back to our room around 2PM, take a shower, take a nap, and spend the rest of the afternoon outside, reading. Then, when it had cooled down, it was off to an early dinner at the lodge’s restaurant where the fare was reasonably priced and unfussy. Each day we’d eat on the 2nd floor patio where, like clockwork, some two dozen deer would come out of the brush to snack on the patch of grass outside of the lodge.

After Zion we went to Bryce. The drive in between was like something out of an Annie Proulx novel: all prairie and distant mountain ranges. After Bryce we drove back to Vegas where what had been dark on our initial trip out of Vegas was now startlingly clear. I couldn’t believe, driving through the Virgin River Gorge in Arizona, that I had been here just a few days before. We then spent the day and evening in Vegas where I was reminded why I hadn’t ever cared for the place.

During our last dinner at Zion before heading to Bryce, as Alice and I were watching the deer and I was drinking my second glass of wine, the most remarkable thing happened. I heard my name spoken and when I turned around standing there was Jeremy, a guy I’d hired to my team almost a year earlier. With office closures we’d only ever seen each other on screens, him calling from California or his parents’ home in Chicago, me calling in from my parents’ place in New Jersey or Alice’s parents’ place in Raleigh or our new place in Atlanta. And now here we both were: in the flesh, flanked by the Navajo sandstone of Zion Canyon, hundreds of miles from the nearest operations of the company we both worked for, impossibly relaxed, work the furthest thing from our minds.