The C Word

Are you writing this down?  You should be. 

I don’t mean write about the thing itself -- the science, the chaos, the pain, the death.  We can be sure there will be plenty of books and movies.  The manuscripts are most likely being written now.

I mean the day-to-day of it.  When your grandchildren or their grandchildren ask “What was it like to isolate yourself” (or shelter in place or be quarantined), your journal will tell them exactly what it was like.

The events of the past 12 weeks (yes, it’s been that long) are being compared -- legitimately, I think -- to World War II. Now, 80-plus years later, we have stories of the battles, the heroics, the code-breaking, the politicians vs the statesmen. But we really most want to know what daily life was like there and then. 

The same will be true 80 years from now. Think Housewife 49.

And if life never goes back to what we still think of as “normal”, that generation will want to know what it was like before, when people went out to work, went wherever and whenever they wanted to.  Ate at crowded little tables in jammed little restaurants.  Danced shoulder to sweaty shoulder at clubs.  Kissed acquaintances on both cheeks.  Slept with whoever they wanted without asking for a health certificate.

Start writing it down.  Which ever way it goes, you will help create an accurate social history.  More important, if you are anything like me, writing it down will help you own it.  This, after all, is our life now.