Time, travel
No one cares about dreams but my blog my rules, and I have had at least one extremely vivid dream where I was maskless in New York. It was kind of a wish but also kind of an anxiety dream, as in, where is my mask, did I forget it.
For a variety of reasons, but mainly the obvious, I had not been to New York City for several years. So what, you might say, some people never go! To which I can only say, it’s my hometown and where I spent much of my adulthood, and I don’t even live that far from it, so this had become a bit of a thing. So near yet so far. What if I wanted to go to Murray’s Cheese and get a ball of mozzarella, why was that impossible? Just because of a wet market or lab leak or antivaxxer social media post or pangolin or…
The borders of my life had been home-daycare-home, plus occasional doctor’s appointments or venturing to slightly more exciting supermarkets outside the immediate neighborhood. I did not want to become one of those people who finds travel too daunting but when had I even last been east of Yonge? I learned, when getting the baby her US passport, that my own had expired, and I hadn’t even noticed because this had not come up.
Then stars aligned in the form of: baby and I got the passports, and everybody (in the family, at the daycare, on the planet) got covid. And covid, they’re not kidding, it’s no fun! I am still surprised that I can smell things, and this was covid with two shots plus a booster, in someone youngish and in good health. And at this exact moment I was asked to do a media appearance (details once it appears!) that would involve a trip to Manhattan. Which seemed, how to put this? Impossible. The obstacles! The paperwork for this trip, details of which I will not bore you with, was unlike anything I’d encountered. Plus there was the whole quasi-business-trip with an infant, which… worked? My mother watched the baby during the thing itself, but otherwise I just sort of went around with baby in carrier (including in snow; rude of NYC to have Toronto weather the one day Toronto did not), and spent many hours in airports trying to wrangle an overstuffed backpack and a travel stroller. But we got lucky with the flights, in the sense of no one seated next to us, so I could nurse at takeoff and landing without awkwardness (I was fully prepared to do so with awkwardness), so no screaming. We went to New York. We made it back. I still cannot believe this happened.
A strange coincidence of this trip is that right when we went, the city had gotten rid of the mask mandate. I did not realize this, and assumed there was just less rule-abiding than in Toronto. But apparently the rule itself had changed. I was forced to confront what I would do in that much-imagined, subconscious-dominating scenario of being in a crowded, unmasked NYC, aka how I had spent most of my life. And apparently I am OK with going from a hotel room to the hotel coffee shop without a mask, except when I’m not. This followed no logic. On the one hand I felt somewhat invinsible, post-whole-family-covid. On the other, I was inside and inside means you wear a mask right? Who knows. Also I’m used to sleeping in shifts b/c baby and alone with baby (husband and toddler - and poodle, do not forget poodle - were home for this the trial run trip) meant if she was up, so was I, so I was slightly asleep during all of this.
Now I’m back in Toronto where for the next few days there’s still the mask rule, then there won’t be, unless that changes, or unless Putin aims for Chicago and misses, or who knows. Yes, the threat of nuclear war may well have made me a bit more carpe diem about the whole thing. It may have even inspired me to spend (just) over $100 US on a pair of jeans I didn’t even try on but that are magnificent. Will they still fit now that my sense of taste has fully returned? A problem for another time.
So. Was I back home? It certainly felt familiar, this maskless Manhattan state of affairs, given that it is, again, how I’d spent most of my life. But also bizarre. Home is Toronto, like the t-shirts say.
In New York, I wanted to take it all in, but I was reminded that with a baby in a carrier, you will do things like wait for a Target family restroom that someone is using for maybe not so family-friendly purposes for half an hour, but not things like go out for Japanese food in the East Village at 8pm. That said, given that this was basically a few hours, I did kind of a ton? Or at least, walked a lot, dragged my mother around SoHo, found gifts for family, and sat in the hotel room and ate a Russ and Daughters bagel with lox and salmon roe, accompanied by a similarly delicious fresh squeezed orange juice. I also learned that a thing you don’t want to do shortly before being filmed is attempt to give a baby unfamiliar with these a puree from a pouch.
Anyway, barring catastrophe, I expect to be back there soonish, with the whole family, this time making it to Murray’s for that ball of mozzarella.