Sunday morning, right in the middle of a quiet wrestling match with one of my daily crossword puzzles, there was suddenly bloody murder at the back door. Somebody had driven into the yard without my knowing it, but my little perimeter guard was loudly on the job. It’s never mayhem or mutilation she has in mind; rather, it’s eagerness to see who it is.
Who it was, was a young woman with a very pleasant face (extrapolating from her eyes; the rest was concealed by a mask) carrying a small brown paper bag and saying, “This is a gift for you.” She came as far as the foot of the ramp, and we both extended arms cautiously to make the transfer. It was a bag of four fresh doughnuts from a home bakery a few miles north — the English language doesn’t boast words sufficiently effusive to describe them — sent me by my downstairs tenant, who was also getting some. The label on the bag suggestively included the internet address of the bakery; the website, when I checked it out, featured a brief clip of the kitchen where the doughnuts originated, and how to get more.
That gift exemplified perfectly the experience of sheltering in place when that place is Vermont. Expecting another serene day of waiting for restaurants and coffee shops to open, we often find our quietude disrupted by an intrusion so thoughtful and delightful that it brightens our whole prospect. The best example I can think of in literature is Longfellow’s The Children’s Hour. My tenant, whom I’ve never met because of the threat of viral transmission, did a Sweet Caroline: “One touchin’ one, reachin’ out …” So, even though I’m doing my best — successfully so far — at bucking the trend noted on the internet of folks at home gaining weight, I heated the coffee I was saving for mid-afternoon and had a couple of doughnuts.
There’s been much speculation about what changes will come to our society from our experiences during the current pestilence. Given the nature of our resistance to change — by the time the lookout on the Titanic reported the iceberg, it was probably too late to miss it — I doubt that much that could be improved actually will be. But you never know. It will require leadership able to articulate a vision and then able to rally enough of us around it in order to achieve it.
There’s no doubt: Many people are more thoughtful in these circumstances, in every sense of the word. The pandemic has so far struck only one friend of mine that I’m aware of. His recovery was touch-and-go, and almost miraculous. He’s 20 years younger than I. What if the virus invades this quiet home? We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. Meanwhile, the thoughtfulness extends more easily — or should — to others. I’ve been out of hot dogs for more than a week; I buy ’em in boxes of 20. Same for my favorite sausage; empty case on my last two tries. So when yesterday, after glancing ruefully at the long rows of empty toilet paper shelves, I came across both items I’d been missing, I started to take two of each. Then I thought, “Wait a minute. Don’t take more than you normally do. Other folks are in your shoes.”
A friend just down the road keeps a few chickens. He showed up out back and left a dozen eggs on the porch, each one labeled with its date of collection. Another friend has a daughter who’s possibly Vermont’s premier dessert baker. The memory of her last gift, of lemon bars, lingers two weeks later. Here in Vermont, as perhaps no other place I’ve lived, flourishes the notion that we’re in this boat together.
There surely are some changes coming. One will be the at-least-temporary growth of nativism. We are aware as perhaps never before of the amount of our essential and even strategic products that are produced in China. That may diminish. The trick is not to fall for the popular demonization of what could be an important partner in recognizing and conquering our mutual problems, which are global.
Millions of Americans are also just appreciating for the first time the ephemeral nature of health care insurance that’s linked to their jobs. Millions of jobs have, at least for the time being, ceased to exist, and the out-of-work former employees are also out of luck. A serious illness or accident can bankrupt them in weeks. So if ever there was a moment for that leadership I mentioned to grab people by the ears and demonstrate the advantages of guaranteed government health insurance, it’s now. I’ve had it since the year 2000, and love it! The mishmash of our current system — to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln: of the investors, by the lobbyists, and for the executives — is an unbearable itch that needs to be scratched.
So we wait, clad variously in protective gear or aggressive attitudes, and we may never know which worked better. There’s an exit to this somewhere, one which some of us, regrettably, won’t find. But those who do will, I hope, be duly thankful for their deliverance, duly compassionate for the families who suffered a loss, and duly thoughtful about what changes the future surely will require of us.
Willem Lange can be reached at willem.lange@comcast.net.
