Pandemic Nostalgia

6/1/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

During the pre-vax pandemic era, Greg and I walked almost daily within and around a four-by-ten-block neighborhood area. Because we rarely saw anyone walking those blocks, and even car traffic was light to nonexistent, it seemed like the safest route. A bonus were the traffic circles, where I could stand to sketch a safe distance from both pedestrians and cars. (In retrospect, our over-abundance of pandemic caution was ridiculous; many other areas would have been perfectly safe to walk, and passing other pedestrians on the sidewalk was hardly a risk in any case, but it was a reflection of my anxiety back then.)

After we were vaccinated, we widened our walking route, and my walk/sketch fitness program has widened it further. For quite a while, I avoided walking that overly familiar four-by-ten-block area just because I had felt I had literally sketched “everything” there.

Now when I occasionally walk that route again, it feels nostalgic. I’ll pass the same blossoming dogwood trees that delighted us in 2020, and I remember where kids had decorated the sidewalk with rocks painted with affirmations and greetings. There’s the lawn where we had seen a gopher’s movements near its hole (but not the gopher itself, though we waited quite a while for it to pop out). Although these memories are not related to the pandemic itself, I will forever associate them with 2020. Dogwoods, painted rocks and gophers were our daily touchstones of reality in a world that seemed unreal.