Hard not to think about the strange spring that struck four years ago. Looking back, it feels like a slice of time removed from the rest of my life, like a sandbar in a river.
When did I understand what was coming? I can only think of that line from Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn: “Never. Every day. Yesterday. Right at this moment.”
I remember the news bulletin from China that arrived at the end of December. I talked to the husband of a colleague of mine who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in pandemic preparedness, who assured me “it will fizzle out.” I wasn’t convinced. I thought: this is not going to turn out to be nothing.
But a premonition is not the same thing as understanding that your life—and the life of the whole world—is about to run into a hard fact.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to gender:hacked by Eliza Mondegreen to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.