Halting Proximity

One of my company’s clients sent an email hoping my colleagues had gotten through the coronavirus lockdown in Tokyo safely, that our families were safe and well wherever they lived in the world, and that we would all meet up again.

This was during the second week of work in June. While there are no craters, no bullet holes and nothing to show for a physical manifestation of coronavirus lockdowns other than that we are now all required to wear face masks, it still feels like we are crawling out of rubble—both emotionally and, for some, financially.

Moving onwards looks different for everybody. There are those who want to get back to business as usual and put this experience behind them, and those who have a different perspective of what they want now. This experience has changed all of us in ways big and small.

We don’t sit as close together as we once did. We don’t hug. Conversations are briefer. There is no physical contact. Our sense of community is bruised like a peach rolling from a table and making contact with a marble floor. A comment was made that it would be a second weekend of ‘celibate(tion)’ but no one feels the need to connect socially after all the rebuffing of physical proximity at work.

Some employees are more affected than others. In their own culture, there may be a traditional triple kiss on the cheek, a hug or perhaps a handshake. No more. In fact, we mostly recoil to prevent an accidental exchange of physical greeting. Now I greet people differently from how I used to.

No traditional hug or high five. No pat on the back. No triple cheek kiss. Handshakes are verboten. Far fewer exchanges of small gifts of candy. No more tasting of other people’s food. It feels like coming out of an amnesia and not being recognized by someone because your past shared experiences are now a damp blackboard free of chalk. All you do is stare at the slate and watch the water drying off in streaks, from shiny wet to its original dull surface.

Dull. Restricted. Like a stroke victim having to teach an injured brain how to reconnect to a limb neurologically banished from the brain’s circuitry—at first making do with all the jerks and misfired spasms until familiarity and repetition gains control.

I imagine I felt like this when I was learning to walk, or when my family moved and I was abruptly surrounded by a world that no longer spoke my native Spanish, which was replaced by American English.

And now here I am, connecting to a lost and buried feeling of frustration because someone sweetly sent me a heartfelt email.