Laura Pedersen - Its Come to This: A Pandemic Diary

its come to this

Copyright c 2021 by Laura Pedersen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests: LauraPedersenBooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-7367362-0-3

E-ISBN: 978-1-7367362-1-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021904773

Cover and interior design by Tabitha Lahr

Printed in the United States of America

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope.
And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
E.B. WHITE

I like France, where everybody thinks hes Napoleon
down here everybody thinks hes Christ.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

A friend called and invited me to an F. Scott Fitzgerald conference a few years back. I assumed the conference was in Fitzgeralds birthplace of St. Paul, Minnesota, though it wouldve made sense if it were in Manhattan or Long Island, or even Alabama, where Fitzgerald famously courted his future wife Zelda.

Its in Toulouse, my friend said.

Toulouse? I replied. Wheres that? Of course, I know about Toulouse, France, but why would a Fitzgerald Conference be there? He explained that the host in Italy, where the Fitzgeralds actually lived for a time, had canceled at the last minute. France sounded good to me. A woman in my building was from the South of France, and her children left out wine for Santa and carrots for his reindeer.

Traveling to JFK airport from the Upper East Side should be a simple affair since its only fifteen miles as the pigeon flies. Traffic is usually horrendous and for the sake of expediency and the environment, I prefer public transportation. From my front door I walked six blocks to the subway wearing a backpack and dragging a suitcase, since after the conference I planned on doing some sightseeing. This ten-minute walk required navigating entire blocks of scaffolding, construction workers having a sandwich or a smoke, tables operated by fruit vendors, double-wide baby carriages, tourists strolling three across, and pedestrians standing in the middle of the sidewalk transfixed by their phones.

Upon reaching the 86th Street subway station, I heaved my bag down two flights of stairs still slippery from a recent downpour. Upon reaching the bottom step I was fairly certain the mesh where Id had a hernia operation five years earlier had ripped wide open. The platform was chockablock with irritable commuters, and the grunts and scowls made it clear that an overstuffed backpack and suitcase were not welcome. The crowd continued to grow exponentially and after a ten-minute wait I pushed my bags and myself inside a 6 train. No teen or twenty-something offered a seat to this fifty-something, so I took that as a compliment.

Theres no direct public transport to the airport from Manhattan, the way there is in every civilized city around the globe, so at 53rd street it was necessary to switch to an E train. I had to walk down two flights of stairs because the escalator was broken, as is often the case with subway escalators. It was 90F and humid on this early summer day, but there was no air-conditioning on the platform. I boarded the next train and listened to school children loudly debate whether you should think ahead before getting a tattoo or do it spontaneously, and who are the best artists. We were stalled for ten minutes between stations due to a track fire and those checking their phones for information couldnt get any reception.

At Sutphin Boulevard in Queens, I exited the train and lugged my bags for a mile, squeezed into a jam-packed elevator, rode up two levels, and searched for the airlink to JFK among several subway and bus lines. A detour steered me an additional half mile that traversed an outdoor bus lane where I passed a dozen homeless people and several panhandlers and felt horrible about traveling to France.

A long line snaked toward the row of turnstiles where it was necessary to reinsert my metro card. However, many travelers were angry to discover they had to pay another fare and refill their cards, which required standing in a different line. The turnstiles were locking for no apparent reason and agents in orange vests helped with mixed success.

After ninety minutes of sweating through my clothes and facing a possible groin rupture, I was on the Airlink to JFK. Six overhead signs in large orange letters asked, FEELING ILL? THINK ITS A COLD? IT COULD BE MEASLES. Once again, I wasnt nearly as excited about a trip to France as I had been that morning.

I arrived at Terminal 8 and it was a mere mile to the check-in counter. Unprovoked, the ticket agent informed me that if I paid to use the lounge, there was a shower. Its worth noting that what I just described is the best public transportation option available from the Upper East Side to JFK. I was not in training for any athletic events, purposely seeking hardship, or trying to economizeI just didnt want to be stuck in traffic for two hours in ninety-degree heat while trapped inside a taxi with a plexiglass barrier that insured air-conditioning for the driver and a sauna for the passenger. Still, the only reason I lived to tell the public transportation story is because Im in relatively good shape and traveling solo, whereas a senior citizen, or someone with a child, or a person with the slightest disability would have been severely challenged. I wondered why going to the airport was an Olympic event, or else a contest for those who are bored with Tough Mudder endurance races, which feature obstacles that play on common human fears, such as fire, water, electricity, and heightscheck, check, check, and check.

Toulouse is an elegant, historic city in Southern France perched on the banks of the glorious River Garonne, without all the grittiness and pickpockets of Marseilles. A day before leaving Id checked the weather to have just the right attire for the end of June. Im accustomed to the Fahrenheit temperature scale, however, when I was in elementary school there was a big push to learn the metric system. Supposedly we were all going to convert at any moment, like the countries that changed from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right-hand side in a single day. As a result, I spent most of my youth multiplying by one and eight tenths and adding thirty-two. Low and behold, the Celsius switcheroo never came to pass, and weve been accidentally blowing things up ever since due to calculation errors. Nevertheless, the Great Metric Scare familiarized me with the system, and it was useful for ordering Loganberry by the liter and fireworks by the kilo in Canada. So when Id read that Toulouse was supposed to be 108 degrees, I thought that was odd, since metric temperatures are considerably below their Fahrenheit counterpart. One hundred eight? I decided that France must have switched to an even newer form of measurement, perhaps based on a carafe of wine or the length of a baguette. However, a little Googling revealed that the duration of my trip would be accompanied by a Sahara Desert heat wave and that 108 was indeed Fahrenheit.

Being from Buffalo, I know all about weird weather, including lake-effect snow, thundersnow, Alberta clippers, ground blizzards, the slightly pornographic-sounding large scale frontal blizzard, and since moving to New York City, Ive added Manhattan trash twisters to the list. Yet, I still dont know the cause or even the definition of a Sahara Desert heat wave other than to say it was 107F, humid,