C. and I escaped the city for a few days to see some space and light. We joined a few friends for a trip into New Hampshire’s mountains, and I felt that old happy thrum of possibility as I pointed the rental car north. I was overwhelmed by speed and motion after four months spent within a tight radius of the bedroom, living room, supermarket, and the park. As Interstate 91 gave way to empty lanes lined with trees, we talked about finding a diner for lunch, maybe someplace with massive menus and chrome. And it was remarkable, this sudden act of forgetting among the five of us, a split-second glitch in thought as if we’d left the past four months behind.
Each night in 2020 I wrote a short post for a series called Notes From the End of a World because I wanted to etch these times into my memory. Before the world changed completely.