What words best describe the feeling of time in 2020?
Some years blend together. That's not 2020. Much like we robotically reply when somebody asks our date of birth, we won't need any prompts to recall our days BC (before Covid) or the year that changed it all. And I contend that routine ways of framing the time that passed—days, weeks, months—won't suffice.
Eight episodes of Tiger King, 12 loaves of homemade sourdough bread, and four attempts to buy toilet paper—that's how long the lockdown lasted.
How long did quarantine last? Approximately 516 happy birthday songs, 14 take-out meals, and eight episodes of Some Good News.
Not to mention summer, which we can begin to describe as 280 Zoom meetings, 36 citywide claps, and thousands of Black Lives Matter marches.
Indeed, it was a nine drive-by graduations, 71 Fauci daydreams, 22 novels read, and 102 what-day-is-its kind of year.
Because it no longer makes sense to say that it was 9 months ago that I had planned to be hiking lake-side volcanoes in Guatemala. It was more like 250 sweatpants days, 96 bottles of wine, 15 pounds, and six nasal swabs ago.
Remember your last birthday when I let you blow cooties all over my piece of cake? That wasn't just last year. It was before eye smiles, backyard haircuts, and water cooler chats with toddlers. It was 946 dog walks and 122 games of solitaire ago. It was seven hand-sewn masks and hopefully 52 video calls with our loved ones ago, because if you'll allow me one dark sentence, not all of our loved ones made it.
So if you have the luxury of framing the year in cups of coffee, sunrises, or batches of cookies rather than funerals or hospital stays, take it and consider yourself blessed.
Gratitude, perspective, homology. This year has been filled with much more than 12 months.
Top image: Mural by MOZE. Photo by Phil Noble.
Bottom image: Mural by Uzey. Photo by Lars Baron.