It did not start out that way, of course. All morning there was a very literal and metaphorical fog of despair blanketing the city, a thick wave of air-trash blown in from Mordor. Or Cloverdale. The angst-fog evaporated at exactly noon…then it was ON. Indianapolis was day-drunk three hours later. Everyone was out walking and smiling and aggressively socializing from safe distances. Everything and everyone was re-connected, if only briefly.
For the first time in what felt like centuries, it wasn’t 31 degrees with mixed sleet and bleakness. It was shockingly gorgeous outside. That made the difference—that’s all we needed. Suddenly, nobody was inside watching the news. Nobody was inside checking the death toll in Italy and doing the grim math in their heads. Nobody was inside on Twitter scrolling through all seven circles of anxiety. Nobody was inside trying to figure out awful eighth-grade algebra equations and/or sand-blasting the Amazon box on the porch before bringing it inside. Everyone was outside; it all built on itself. Everything felt normal for a little while, which was weird—or as “normal” as a city-wide block party on a Wednesday afternoon in March could be.
You only get a few yesterdays in life. Yesterday was perfect, relatively speaking. Yesterday was a MOMENT. We will be hanging on to yesterday for quite some time, as the CDC data worsens and the nightly news gets darker and the Indianapolis weather returns to its default springtime setting of mostly dreary with a 6,000,000,000,000 percent chance of BLAH.
We will think back on yesterday sometime next week and we’ll smile, especially after the last 9,000 days back in quarantine re-watching Cars 2 again and e-learning Western Civ or whatever—with a constant, physics-defying 19-degree rain outside. Or we We SHOULD remember it. Because everything is about to get a whole lot worse.
This is all awful already. All of it. All of … [gestures wildly toward the entirety of Earth] … THIS. You don’t need me telling you that. We’re here to not talk about that.
My point here is this: whenever this thing ends, there will be a global party of unimaginable debauchery. Unimagined togetherness. Lots of beer. Meatloaf-shots. We got a micro-taste of that yesterday. There will be old-timey parades day and night, for weeks—maybe months. Just a never-ending stream of parades. And parties. And clambakes. And hootenannies. All of it with old-timey ticker tape streaming down from above. And instead of a sailor kissing a pretty lady in Times Square, it’ll be an ER doctor in Irvington kissing some guy she’s holding at the waist. It will be an iconic image.
Yesterday gave us a glimpse of what’s to come. Focus on yesterday for the time being. The yesterday will be the today here soon. Hang tight, gang.