Peering Out a Pandemic Window.

It’s this that I remember:
There were subway tracks and a woman on the platform who sold spiced mango out of plastic bags. There was a steel drum and rats, chased by headlights. The A train doors, the West Side Story chord as the train pulled out of the station. The stairs, long, the stairs, crowded, umbrellas, black, dark, popping open as we emerged to the early morning streets.  Coffee, hot. The trudge through puddles, through slush, the waiting at lights, the dodging of cars, coffee spilling down the sides, the cup then stained with coffee, with lip gloss.

I remember it as if it is distant, a long-ago dream, a someone else, a something else, another time.

Then, I had a baby growing inside of me, tucked away, safe. I was sick with that baby for a long time. Then, there was (still is, of course) a global pandemic. We were home for a long time.  The baby arrived. He was blonde, haloed, mine. We were home and home and home and home.

There was no commute, but there was also no writing. There was no theater. There wasn’t time, wasn’t space (physically or mentally). Art wasn’t practical. There wasn’t childcare. There wasn’t school. There wasn’t energy or mood.

But time creeps. And then it rushes. And here we are. Here I am. Revising plays, revising novels, scanning audition notices, scanning plays.

Here I am. Here we are.

Art endures. It waits.