Living in a city during covid was a balm, not a burden
Living in a city during the pandemic is good, actually.
One late summer evening in 2020, I peeled myself off my couch and stuffed my weary body into attire that was not, for a change, black leggings and a t-shirt. I had reached the upswell in a well-worn cycle that had been replicating itself since mid-March—a cycle marked by despair and inaction in the downswings and punctuated by acute bursts of motivation and elation on the ups—where I was ready to experience something beyond the boundaries of my South Philadelphia row home. On this evening, I would venture outside. And I would cajole my husband into joining me for the excursion.
Stepping onto the main street in my neighborhood—even with half the businesses shuttered—invigorated me instantly (as it always did when I could muster the internal spark to coax me outside). I felt steroid-injected, adrenalized. My limbs, achy and couch-crumpled mere moments ago, came alive, meeting the energy of the twinkling street lamps, honking horns, and the somehow still-vibrant but beleaguered clamor of commerce and commotion. The thrumming headache that had been near-constant for a week dissipated. A long-forgotten bounce returned to my step.
Regarding the scene that unfolded before me, I rejoiced in the liberation of escape. I had shed the sepia-drab pen of the indoors and re-dressed in the technicolor expanse of the cityscape. Without exaggeration, the jolt to my mood was dramatic—the contrast between minutes ago at home, and now in the street, was as stark as life feeling utterly pointless, to things seeming possible and worth doing again.
Taking it all in was a balm: Couples holding hands. Dogs defiantly stopping to sniff the curb as their walkers coerced them towards home, tugging on the leash. Makeshift outdoor dining rooms tumbling into the street. Buses making their drowsy procession up the avenue. Cyclists en route to or from work. Families from all over the globe, living here. Life was still happening; we weren’t alone.
Reaching the “Fountain”—a centralized mini-town-square that anchors the commercial corridor and boasts, in addition to its namesake water feature, benches beckoning locals to sit, stone tables with built-in chess boards, and an array of seasonal decorations depending on the time of year—we arrived to an exalted tableau. A multitude of neighbors had gathered there—masked up and staying conscientiously apart—but unmistakably together.
A traveling DJ duo had set up their decks and was serenading the crowd. Dancing, the neighbors thumped and swayed in unison. Toddlers jumped with glee to the sound of the beat. Old-timers grumpily gathered in a corner to watch a portable TV and commiserate in spite of the booming bass. Young and old, people sipped libations with varying degrees of alcohol content out of paper bags, pouncing on a fleeting covid-inspired leniency about open containers. Most people had brought their dogs. A local chef was cooking something outside in a small chiminea, the fragrant smoke casting a spooky warehouse-party pall on the proceedings.
Overwhelmed, I briefly wept. Tears of relief and comfort pooled in the top-ridge of my face mask. I felt held by the city. Being in community—even with strangers—can be powerful and life-saving. We don’t always have to know each other; sometimes people-proximity is salve enough. And this wasn’t the first time I would have this revelation, or the last. Whenever I was able to seize the instinct to go outside (rather than letting it subside into the glowing succubus of my cellphone screen), this revelatory sensation would meet me on the other side of my door.
Still, many (who could afford it) fled urban centers during the pandemic, striving for a yawning pastoral swath that might fabricate the freedom of pre-scourge life. Even now, almost a year in, I know several people who are hellbent on chasing the yen that crystallized in response to the pandemic’s limitations—the wish to spread out in the near-wilderness, staking their claim on some foliage-specked acreage in the great out there. I get it; I do. But I can’t relate to it.
In the moments I felt most depleted and trapped by the torpor of gloom, I could simply walk outside my door and be reminded that the world miraculously still existed—stubbornly—in spite of a catastrophic failure of leadership and a broken system that was literally murdering people with its hardwired negligence, racism, and greed. Through sustained tragedy, through prolonged emergency, through unrelenting systemic failure, the city’s vibrancy persisted anyway—dampened—but still palpable.
The baker was still making bread, leaving the bag of loaves dangling on the local restaurateur’s doorknob. The stroller moms were still negotiating their duties hurriedly along the sidewalk, sipping a coffee balanced precariously atop a mound of mommying accoutrements. The South Philly bellows of familiarity and greeting still bleated through my window, the default conversational volume ten decibels above what would be considered appropriate elsewhere—quickly devolving into animated exchanges of assorted grievance shouted at one other across the street. Camaraderie. A lingering bustle among the decimation. Everywhere, reminders of the world we almost lost, and the things we are fighting to hold on to, and the urgent need to fix the many things that remain deeply broken.
The city—oft derided by cable news anchors as a fiery dystopian hellscape—saved me from myself. A vital place of solace, again and again, it brought me back from the brink. No matter how much my body and brain throbbed with lethargy at times, the city’s solution was always the simple same: just go outside and you’ll feel better. I’m not sure I could have lived anywhere else and made it through.