THE ISOLATION JOURNALS - DAY 16 - ROOTED IN HOPE

Today’s prompt:
Call someone you haven’t spoken to in some time. Ask what their days and weeks of isolation, or essential work have been like. What is a moment that has been significant for them in recent weeks? Try to understand why that moment in particular. What did it show them about themselves or their families or their coworkers? How did an emotion—a first gut response, like anger—evolve and reveal itself to be something else altogether, like fear?

Then, write a journal entry inspired by that conversation. Explore what stepping out of your own experience and into someone else’s brought up, maybe even clarified, for you. What was unexpected? Did it evoke a significant moment from your own life over these past weeks? How has your understanding of that moment changed? 

Rooted in Hope

My friend Tina is a hugger. A toucher. An exuberant high-fiver.

Perhaps it’s her Italian heritage. Perhaps it’s her unique, grab-life-by-the-balls personality. Or perhaps it’s the innumerable losses she’s experienced, many of which we’ve shared and grieved together. Whatever the reason, Tina is a people person. Someone who loves to touch her fellow human beings – literally and figuratively.

Fortunately, Tina has a job that suits her personality. She manages a hardware store. Not a Lowe’s or Home Depot or other corporate big box retailer, but an honest-to-God local hardware store. A store with an old-fashioned popcorn machine that shoppers can help themselves to on an honor-system donation basis. A store that offers happy hours with complimentary wine (really good wine!) for its customers. A store that generously gives back to the community in innumerable ways.

So, how does a high-touch person like Tina survive in these social distancing times?

“It’s hard,” she admits. “What I love about my job is the human relationships, seeing customers’ faces, making personal connections.” Today, Tina wears protective masks that hide her emotions. Nitrile gloves that remove all trace of human touch. The store has plexiglass partitions that impose an additional barrier between her and the rest of the world.

Some change is good. “Usually, when I’d approach shoplifters in my store,” Tina says, “they’d be all up in my grill. ‘I’m just browsing!’ they’d say. Now, I go up to them and ask from six-feet distance, ‘What essential needs can I help you with?’ If they tell me they’re just browsing, I can tell them to get lost. No one’s allowed to browse anymore.”

Most change is not good. Boxes of regulation masks and latex gloves are in such high demand they need to be stored behind the register to prevent theft. Mini-bottles of hand sanitizer are constantly running out because homeless people are desperate for a way to protect themselves from the pandemic. The store’s small staff is always searching for suppliers to replenish toilet paper and Clorox wipes and other items required to appease the panicked public.

Tina’s store sits on the edge between San Francisco’s Chinatown and North Beach – the storied neighborhood of Italian immigrants, Jack Kerouac, and the Beat Generation. On a typical day, tourists from around the world would stop by to pick up a refrigerator magnet, blinged-out keychain, or embroidered tea towel. They’d be full of questions: How do we get to Fisherman’s Wharf? Where do you recommend for lunch? How much farther to Coit Tower? These days are different. No more happy tourists with charmingly accented questions; instead, anxious locals waiting curbside for their online orders.

“It’s a brave new world,” Tina says.

“Has anything surprised you?” I ask. “Things you wouldn’t have expected before the crisis?”

She pauses for a moment and then answers, “Seeds.”

“Seeds?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “Seeds and soil. These days, people seem to want to see things grow.”

That makes sense to me.

Emily Dickinson once wrote that hope is the thing with feathers.

But I think hope is actually a thing with roots.