I got my second shot on the second of May and, after — while still cautious — I started doing some activities I hadn’t done since the previous March. Most importantly, I visited my 95-year-old grandfather, one of the most significant people in my life who, prior to COVID, I had the fortune of being able to see every few weeks. (Our reunion ended the way it usually has for the last almost-thirty years — with the two of us watching black and white films in the living room and me eventually falling asleep on the couch before him because, despite our age difference, his bedtime is about four-and-a-half hours after mine). Least importantly, I rode the subway, armed with hand sanitizer, but without fear, still bewildered by the knowledge that in February of 2020, I used to routinely eat apples while also holding on to the pole. (I am confident this practice is how I got my COVID antibodies). Averagely, I went on dates. (“I kissed a boy!!!,” I text my friends Zach and Ashley in all caps after the first one, the most G-rated recap of a date ever given in our 10 year group message history). Life wasn’t getting back to “normal” — it still hasn’t and, truthfully, I don’t want to ever fully return to how I used to live — but in May, I did start feeling much more comfortable with my surroundings.
Still, there are things that I had forgotten about being out in the real world. There are things I experienced this month that I haven’t had to deal with in over a year and pretty quickly, I found myself overwhelmed by both all that I had missed and all that I had forgotten. While I was thrilled to be back in the city, to see people I hadn’t seen in a year, to do activities I thought I would maybe never get to do again, returning to the outside world with the comfort and privilege of being vaccinated was an adjustment — one that I did not take lightly.
May 2021 Reads
“....justifying it — as all such men do — by claiming these violations are for her own good.”
On the day I was going to visit my grandfather, my plan was to time my train arrival from the city to his town with my mom’s car ride from Massachusetts to New York. My mom told me what time she was supposed to get to my station and, in true Prandato fashion, I took a later train, knowing that my family rarely runs on time.
In truer Prandato fashion, by the time I arrived at the station on the later train, my mom was still half an hour away.
Over the years, I have become an expert at filling the odd amounts of time allotted to me while I wait for my family and so, thirty minutes of time alone at a train station was not unwelcome. I went inside the attached cafe to buy a croissant, then comically struggled opening the heavy door while holding both my bags and food while also trying not to use my hands on my way out. I attracted enough attention that a skinny middle-aged man with eyes that lingered a few seconds too long came up behind me to help push it open. I didn’t want to engage in conversation, but he couldn’t see my thankful smile under my mask, so after I said “Thanks,” and he returned with a compliment about my outfit, a short romper with heels, I left him behind, searching for a space I could safely eat my food without being around other people.
Less than five minutes later, I heard his voice over my shoulder and immediately realized all the things I had done wrong — leaving the crowded indoor restaurant, moving to a secluded spot on the stairs behind some trees, having my belongings spread on the ground while I dug in my bag for hand sanitizer. Everything I had done were things that would have kept me safe from COVID, but were also all things that could put me in danger as a woman, something I had completely forgotten to stay vigilant of after not having to utilize those safety skills for over a year.
I was slower than I used to be when it came to diffusing situations like this. When he asked if I had a boyfriend, I automatically responded “No,” realizing as soon as the words left my mouth that I should have — would have, without thought, in the past — lied and said yes. When he asked for my number, I gauged the secludedness of the location and decided to give it to him, knowing it would be easier to give him the real one and block him later than him potentially getting angry that I was withholding it while no one else was around to see what was happening. Every woman I know has had to do these mental mathematics of risk in split seconds for most of their lives and while I was embarrassed by how I had weakened that defining skill, I was also horrified by how fast it came back to me.
While I was highly uncomfortable, I wasn’t actually concerned about what could happen to me until he started asking when someone would be there to pick me up, blatantly hinting that we should leave together. At the same time he started getting closer and complimenting the way my legs looked in my outfit, I text my roommate, asking her to call me and pretend like something was wrong. As I answered her call and made my face look worried, grabbing my things and walking quickly back to the cafe to spend the rest of my waiting time hiding masked in the women’s restroom, I didn’t even have to tell her why I had sent that initial emergency text.
The first words out of her mouth were “Who was he?”
“When one is homesick what one will find most comforting to recall are those lighthearted little stories that have been told a thousand times before.”
I woke up in the morning on my sixth Friday in the city and wanted to go back to Massachusetts.
It’s not that I didn’t love being back in New York because I did and I do (I still don’t believe I will ever want to permanently live anywhere else, a devastating fact for my bank account), but after ten months of having my parents and Charlie as roommates, I missed them and our easy, laid-back routine. I woke up that morning, early as I always do, and weighed the pros/cons of ditching all my weekend plans to hop on a train and surprise my parents.
Considering my only concrete plan that weekend was to go on a first date with a (fully vaccinated! that is my one requirement! the standards are on the ground, baby!) man who had initially told me he lived on the Upper West Side, then said to meet him by his apartment on 210th Street in the Bronx — which, geographically, is using the location “UWS” verrrrrrrrry broadly — I was in Penn Station on a train home less than two hours after I’d woken up.
I am lucky that my parents live so close to me. Six hours from me having the first inkling of the thought that I could maybe go back for the weekend, I was home, surprising my mom (she sobbed uncontrollably), Charlie (his 65-pound body shook so hard with excitement that I was concerned) and my dad (who I had actually told I was coming when I hastily bought my ticket, but who I think had forgotten over the short span of time and was also surprised because he did not remember to unlock the front door, leaving me stranded on our front porch for the first 15 minutes of my arrival).
My parents, in fits of inspiration over the last year, have systematically reorganized their entire home and the weekend I came back was no different. They were putting the finishing touches on sorting through old mementos that had been scattered around our basement and we spent a full evening going through a box filled with papers and photographs that had no discernible timeline. We’d pull out photos of my mom as an infant right after finding a letter addressed to me and my brothers from Santa, clearly written in both my dad’s handwriting and tone with sentences like “Thank you for the cupcake… your dad says your mom is a real cupcake, too” (it is incredible we did not piece together the Santa Claus mystery earlier in childhood than we did). Each item we extracted from the jumbled box had a story, stories that I have heard my entire life, but more than anything, wanted to hear again. I loved that night with my parents — loved that every detail of every story was the same as it has always been and held on to that tightly, knowing that those consistent tales will be something I can rely on to bring comfort on days it’s not possible for me to quickly hop on a train back home.
“....when you look up at the sky, you realize nothing that you ever do really matters.”
My rooftop is not very large and it’s pretty loud and sometimes, it inexplicably smells like chicken nuggets, but it does have a breathtaking view of New York City. In the early days of COVID, when I was in the city alone, I went up there every single day and stood in my favorite spot, the spot that gives you an equal view of iconic landmarks like the Empire State and One World Trade and the Statue of Liberty and, my personal favorite, the Palazzo Chupi, a bright pink building in West Village that peppers the view with a violent pop of color. It calmed me down, being up there back then and looking out over New York, knowing that even though I was alone and terrified of what was happening to my city, every person in every building for as far as I could see was going through a similar lockdown experience.
Now that I’m back, I spend as much time as I can up there. I thought, after going so long without seeing people, that I’d prefer spending time on the roof with my friends, but I’ve found (while that is lovely! if you are reading this, I’d be happy to take you up there! as long as you’re fully vaxxed, baby!) that my favorite times are the ones where I am by myself. I go up a little before sunset, with my headphones and the non-alcoholic IPA’s that have allowed me to still be a beer snob even though I am now sober, and watch the sky turn dark, thinking back on the day, the month, the year. I have changed an incredible amount over the last year — the things that I want or what I consider vitally important no longer line up with what I used to spend such significant energy on — but something that has always stayed consistent is how so incomprehensibly small, yet comforted I feel when I look out at the city.
I’m different, in so many ways, but I love knowing that feeling will always stay the same.
