Tulips & Toilet Paper
Everyone is baking bread. I have yet to fall under the spell of the Sourdough Starter Cult but I wonder if it’s only a matter of time. It seems hysterical to say but yeast is sold out all over town. And not just the kind that comes in a three strip convenience pack. They’ve resorted to buying the big boys. A side trade has begun of starters being left for neighbours from a safe distance. Scientists are sharing experimental yeast techniques. It hasn’t come close to the toilet paper panic of March. One assumes because no matter what we stuff in our face for comfort it’s all coming out the other end eventually.
On Sunday I brought home a 12 pack of two ply made by a company I’d never heard of with a bunny on the front. The urge to both hold it over my head like the Lion King and hide it from possible marauders was overwhelming. That I could muster any emotion towards something I use in private before flushing it into the abyss is frankly appalling. That I look about my safe suburban neighbourhood for marauders is another thing entirely.
This is 2020. Anything goes.
For weeks now I’ve felt I should be documenting it all for posterity. They tell us this week will be the worst. The US Surgeon General compared it to having Pearl Harbour happen all across the country. Surely these are the things I should be recording.
Instead I watch the evolving memes cycle through twitter. So quickly does the “you can only choose 3” subject matter change that none of them can go viral. A small mercy as no one can bear to use that term let alone hear it bandied about by dozens of local news affiliates in a John Oliver segment.
The American Criminal in Chief has pushed the use of a malaria and lupus drug hydroxychloroquine for so long that I’ve actually learned how to pronounce it. Even after it killed off one of his worshippers. Today the New York Times reports he owns stock in the company that makes it. Because of course he does.
Election days are coming and people are required to gather in large groups to vote. The exact opposite thing needed to save lives. It could be argued electing a new leader would have the same effect.
Again, all very important topics. And all things I should probably be writing down in great detail.
Bread is such a crucial part of French life that the government requires there to be a boulangerie within walking distance of everyone. And yet most of us have no idea how to make it. We definitely don’t pay bakers as if they’re offering a service essential to life. We tell ourselves that anyone could do it, and internally devalue the labour. Forced into quarantine people have begun to try for themselves. One assumes it is an attempt to feel normalcy between their knuckles. Perhaps they are desperately seeking a connection to simpler times of generations lost. Those who survived worse times. An effort to hone the skills they didn’t bother to ask their grandparents about. The same grandparents they now have to stay away from lest they be killed.
Something I read said a million people will die. Another source said 200,000. A tiger got it from a human at a zoo. No one wants to talk about the implications of that.
A white tulip opened in my garden today. I say garden, but the rectangle of dirt beneath our lilac trees resembles a cemetery plot. I had never gardened before, my parents are not gardeners either. My seasonal allergies are so severe I actually own the N95 masks in such sort supply these days. But last fall I was struck with the urge to plant tulips. They are called Pink Mistress and Blue Beauty. King Arthur daffodils and unnamed purple-white striped crocus made it into the mix. Down in front a row of fifteen Canadian Liberator tulips designed to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the war ending in Europe are just starting to show.
The world burns and I have a grave filled with flowers.
When I am asked years from now what living through a global pandemic was like I wonder what I will say. Will I explain the fear I felt for friends in China, Spain, France, and the United States. Or the terror of being deemed an essential service worker and risking my health for minimum wage. Or will I laugh and say, “toilet paper and yeast were more valuable than gold!”
