Groundhog Day

Over a year ago when I first retired I imagined the possibility that all the coming days would seem the same and, as if to manifest that fever dream, the pandemic restrictions arrived this spring to make sure every new day in Bisbee would be like yesterday, weather permitting. A rather lukewarm response to the spreading sickness on the state and local level in February was followed with a more heated lukewarm response in March featuring the closing of businesses and a suggestion that we all stay at home for the entire month of April, limiting trips outside the home to get groceries or exercise.. From what I have observed I would estimate about two thirds of my fellow Bisbeeites have followed this suggestion, with a visible one third laughing at the restrictions and carrying on as if there were no danger at all.

I find myself doing very little to vary my routine: walking miles every morning, eating a late home made lunch, throwing darts with a steadily increasing accuracy,and filling my evenings by binge watching English murder mysteries on Amazon Prime. This repetition is not particularly onerous, although one does miss eating out in restaurants, bending the elbow in the local pub, and gathering with friends. The biggest loss for me personally is the inability to visit the Copper Queen Library and replenishing the limited supply of reading material I have on hand. In my desperation to find some sort of literary escape I actually submitted myself to finishing Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose, a boring 569 page slog whose ultimate conclusion seems to be the surprising revelation that most marriages require compromises. (Who knew?) My next unread tome is Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, and while it, too, exceeds 500 pages (my edition is 831, not counting the preface) I believe I will find more sympathetic characters within its covers than Stegner’s irritating roster of complaining, snobby prigs. I have heard the library will allow curbside pickup in another week, but since their collection of Dickens is pretty limited, and inter-library loan services are still closed, I will either have to purchase volumes online or simply wait if I want to continue my acquaintance with one of the greatest writers of the English language.

One thing that varies a routine existence of repetition are the terrifying forays to the local Safeway where, jostling among the masked and the unmasked, shoppers take their lives in their hands just to see if toilet paper has returned to the shelves. I used to enjoy grocery shopping, lingering in the aisles as I debated the costs between generic and name brands and impulse purchasing many delicacies that we could easily do without. Now my hands sweat inside the gloves I wear while my eyeglasses fog from the desperate breaths I gulp while trying to avoid other shoppers. It is an ordeal, not a pleasure.

I don’t know if society will ever return to “normal.” If this is the “normal” I should expect for the remaining years of my life I will need more than Charles Dickens to help me through.