You, still making it through this, are the real MVP

I loved this tweet, asking who or what your pandemic MVPs have been. I will take any chance to celebrate my weighted blanket, to sing the praises of frozen vegetables (they don't go bad! you can roast them!), to take a minute to love on my weekly D&D game. The replies are a gold mine, full of easy and delicious recipes (related, I just made this last night and it's great, and you could do it with frozen broccoli!) and glimmers—a backyard chipmunk, shitty cellphone nature photography, loving partners and friends. Everyone's lists are so different from mine, and I love them, the little nests we've built ourselves this year.

Last spring, I did a zoom hangout with my two best friends. One of them lives in Portland, so in a sense it was like, Why haven't we done this before? instead of the other two of us visiting her individually and sending pictures to the third to make them jealous. James said he was going to add zoom happy hours to the list he was keeping of quarantine things he wanted to keep even after quarantine. (It took us too long but we did another one last week, thank god.) It's been an awful year but there are those things we want to keep with us. Mostly small things, like stocking the freezer with frozen broccoli. Sometimes a little bigger, like the ways we keep in touch with distant friends.

I guess I up and moved to a whole new state, that's a pretty big thing I will be keeping. I was about to write, I want to keep having a bird feeder, but the bird feeder is only possible because of the move, the house, the yard. The bulbs we planted are coming up—the three alliums look like dinosaurs, red and green and spiky, but soon I'll have the purple puffballs I admired for so many years in Brooklyn brownstone front yards. If squirrels fuck them up I don't know what I'll do. 

Most of this year though? Into the fucking trash! I just spent three paragraphs looking on the bright side but the fact is I would murder someone to be able to work at a coffee shop or library today (except for the fact that doing so could literally, well, you get it). The latest edition of AHP's Culture Study was all about that future I am desperate for, where remote work doesn't mean only ever working from home, but means coffee shops and bars ("with the clatter and chatter of other people around you," a phrase that made my mouth water with desire) and at home but also with friends?? I had one perfect post–grad school writing retreat with friends where we did morning pages at the table together, went off to write, cooked dinner together, and read each other's work. The fact that we were writing didn't matter at all. Just the pleasure of being together and doing our own things, convening and dispersing and coming back together as the day went on. 

I'm obviously desperate for being around other people, as alarming as the thought sounds. (I'm desperate for being around other people and not feeling alarmed.) I saw my dad last weekend for the first time in well over a year, and it felt weirdly normal. (I'd done plenty of reminding myself beforehand that I should trust the CDC's guidelines for vaccinated people, as much as my heart might fear they were wrong.) My mom's coming up this Sunday and I think she's going to straight up lick the baby. I might do the same to her. But once I get through the urge of almost consuming every loved one I'm allowed to touch, I can't wait for the pleasure of being near each other and it not even mattering that much. (It always matters.)