Down and Out

Isolation and Connection

It’s early winter, the near side of solstice. The heat in my trusty 2005 Toyota Corolla is warming my toes and I’m nibbling on a cranberry scone, scattering crumbs of dry pastry across the black vinyl passenger seat. I have everything I need inside this car, my own universe. Me and my scone and my iPhone driving these familiar Berkshire roads, on my way to CVS or the post office, taking care of what little business remains. Then I see the man with no teeth. The man with no teeth clearly also has no car. He stands at the edge of the road, sometimes on the northbound side, sometimes on the south, wearing a threadbare jacket. No hat, no gloves, no teeth. It’s hard to say how old this guy is, but regardless, the snow is on its way and I can’t imagine how he’ll be able to stay out there in that flimsy jacket. I think about him, but also about the trees waiting for the white-out. Maybe, unlike us shovelers, the trees look forward to their glittering, sequined Met Gala costumes, the way the sun is refracted off the ice on their branches, blinding the drivers in their Toyotas. A winter storm, like a pandemic, is a commentary on isolation and coming together. If you go into town the day before the storm, all you hear is its annunciation. Dark prophecies…it’s going to snow all morning and all afternoon. We’re going to get fifteen inches. Suddenly everything is we. Everyone at the liquor store is stocking up. Everyone at the hardware store is scavenging for the last bag of rock salt. It’s a burst of activity before we enter the great silence. This time though, the snow didn’t come. All day, the gray hung low over us, threatening, teasing. But nothing fell and we returned to our bleak yearning without the release of a blizzard, the way we used to wade out into the carless gutter on eighty-third street, gleefully knee deep in it. Omicron tickles the backs of our necks.

You don’t realize how much you rely on the company of other people until you watch it in the rearview mirror. I’ve always been dubious, myself, taking some defiant false pride in being a non-joiner. But now I see the cracks on the icy surface of communities grown weary from zoom and the no-end in sight pandemic winter and I know that without other people, my heart will freeze in my rib cage. I wonder if the man with no teeth feels that way, too. I wonder where he’s going, if he wants to be friends. Maybe I could take a picture of him. But, no, I’m reluctant, squeamish about gawking. He’s so close, just a few feet from me in my car as I pass, but so far away in social distance. Any intrusion would be highway robbery, an unforgivable invasion of his privacy like a catcall, a seduction. What’s in it for him?

Still, the untold narratives just out of reach scratch at me. Years ago when we gave up our B&B, we donated six beds to St. Charles parish for a homeless shelter they were opening. A young priest drove up in a u-haul and loaded up the frames, mattresses, and box springs to take to Pittsfield. People who needed a place to rest got to layer their dreams on top of the dreams of stockbrokers and surgeons from the city who had stayed at the B&B. A man with no job and no family slept on top of a woman from New Jersey who complained about the wallpaper. A guy with an arthritic hand and rheumy eyes lay down with a man from the Boston suburbs who had issues with his white egg omelet. They’re all gone now. The pandemic has generated more dark matter in the cosmos. Strangers are becoming stranger. I’d do better if I stuck with the people who already occupy shelf space in my life. Satisfy my hunger and curiosity by listening to my loved ones more generously, digging down instead of branching out. My grandson wants to tell me about ice fishing in Minnesota. He cuts a hole in the frozen surface of Lake Minnetonka and brings up walleye and northern pike. Out of the deep, living creatures swim up to meet him. My heart thaws as he shares his joy in great field guide detail in an email I read stopped at a light in my toasty Corolla.

Signed copies of my 2019 essay collection Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement are available directly from me. The book can also be ordered from Amazon or your local bookseller.