What Will We Remember?
Pandemic Papers 3/24/2020
Twenty, thirty years from now, will our kids’ kids wonder why their mom likes to buy sixty rolls of toilet paper at a time, and restock every time the pile dwindles down to twenty? Will they wonder why Dad likes to stand back when he talks to people, why his need for personal space is so bizarrely huge? He’s generally a warm guy, they will think, but his body language makes him look aloof. And why do they both scrub their hands as if they’re getting ready to perform surgery? They might wonder what made them so.
Mata ji, my grandmother, spent a portion of her life in India living in a house made of unbaked mud bricks, a house where during the rains, moss would grow on the walls, and during the dry months, a fine dust would cascade down from the ceiling. Her entire neighborhood lived in such houses, and the poverty made them resourceful. To cook the evening rotis, men and women from up and down the street brought their dough to the communal tandoor and slapped the rolled roti dough onto its walls. They didn’t waste any food, sometimes not even banana peels.
To Mata ji, America must have felt paved with gold. A short walk from our house in San Jose was an empty field that exploded with mustard in the spring. She would take two big grocery bags to the field, astounded that everyone seemed oblivious to this bounty. She knew which…
