Sign of the times.

We went to Ikea today, to get out and feel “normal.” I’d been waiting to go since lockdown, to get some very unimportant pots for my new urban gardening habit picked up in Covid. I was excited to go somewhere normal, safe… But upon arriving we forgot masks and stood in the line to get in, while I felt the glare of others shaming me, and I wanted to say, “I just forgot but we drove all the way up here, please forgive me.” The guard checked us at the door to count us in. I felt a nervous energy in the air, as shoppers tried to follow arrows, adjusting their face-coverings, and head in the right direction six feet apart. The restaurant was closed, and the hotdog bar didn’t have cups of ice, or anything self-serve, and we fumbled realizing we were standing in the wrong circle waiting for our wrapped food behind the plexiglass. I never realized how much I’m often distracted by lips, teeth, and facial hair so much so that I may never fully get to an eyelid before someone’s already whizzed by. But now, there was no avoiding plunging into vulnerability. Each pupil was a hot laser scanning until contact, and every gaze I locked with I felt as if I could feel the spiritual weight of humanity calling out above a drowning mask-line.

I stood waiting for a hotdog. A white officer stood in front of me, elbow hovering over her gun while I studied the police garb for the first time ever. The leather belt, the holsters, the puffed back and chest connoting a bulletproof vest, the tight pockets filled with something, the other gadgets I didn’t recognize… I felt naked next to the clad officer, my skinny daughter wiggling below her gun as I tried to keep her from getting too close and breaking the rules trying to sneak a peek of the cinnamon rolls. I publicly admonished her for getting too close to the others in line, to confess my citizenship aloud out of nervousness, though I did not really care that she previously went in the exit arrow to decide about pizza. The girl behind the new plastic cage pouring the soft serve observed my analyzation of the officer and I immediately looked up, catching her big brown eyes locking with mine, and I felt the fear. It was either radiating off of me like an aura or her too as she nervously tried to pack the bag with napkins. I do not think we were afraid of the officer. I think we were afraid of the presence the officer brought. The reminder of the time that I was trying to briefly escape while observing lingonberry jam. But in that moment I locked in with the girl who seemed to be looking for acknowledgment of the feeling I wanted to shake, and in the silence of an extra millisecond, I felt kindred with a slight nod: we were on the same team. Not an “anti” or “for” team, just a humanity team feeling and breathing and noticing and looking.

I glanced at many eyes, but in the ones that stayed for the extra pause, I felt it, the pain, the question marks, if we are safe out here: in Covid, in masks, in stores, in homes, in government, in law, in god, in IKEA. 

Nothing about my basic trip was normal at all. Not because of the lack of amenities or new rules, but because of what that lack represents. The discomfort reveals that things have changed. The eyes are not hiding anymore, and there is pain. We are living in an uncertain new era scanning above the lines to see if we can find friends or enemies within the pools of color splashing and retracting light. We are wearing masks, and somehow seeing each other for the first time.