This essay is part of Bethesda Beat’s Coronavirus Chronicles personal essay series. Visit the submission page to learn more.)
Since the pandemic shutdown, I’ve been taking strolls through my neighborhood. On one of my first walks, I noticed a colorful pompom lying on the ground near a footbridge. It had likely fallen off a child’s hat.
In the past, I would have walked by it, but in my new pandemic mindset, this ball of spiky yarn struck me as being the very image of the COVID-19 virus. I picked up the pompom and tied it to the bridge’s railing, wondering if anyone would see the woolly virus replica as I had.
Though this world crisis has made my life physically smaller, it has offered unexpected gifts: lawn art I’d never noticed before; cherry trees in bloom; and tree trunks carved to look like pencils.
I’ve noticed children, freed from their hectic schedules, playing hopscotch and drawing with chalk with no watchful parents in sight. On one walk, I noticed kids looking bored on my way out, but on my return, they were busily building a fort out of sticks.
The day after discovering my “pompom virus,” I saw that someone had tied a ball of fabric, another virus likeness, on the bridge next to mine. I felt elated. This stranger had recognized my communication and responded in kind. Amid fear and uncertainty, we had found a way to delight in our shared experience.
Now there are nearly 30 pompoms, and I can’t wait for my walks to find more “viruses” tied there, a colorful festoon of offerings. I am buoyed by this kaleidoscope of playful virus shapes that continues to multiply.
One day, when the shutdown is behind us, I hope to meet some of these anonymous friends, so that we can talk about the pleasure of finding furry viruses multiplying on a bridge.
Kerry L. Malawista is a psychotherapist and is co-chair of New Directions in Writing at Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. She lives in Potomac.
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Editor’s note: After this essay was published, Bethesda Beat learned that the group of pompoms was not a community reaction to the pompom Malawista tied to the bridge. They were part of a planned art project, led by artist Anja Caldwell of FiberArt.Studio in Potomac.
Read other essays in the Coronavirus Chronicles series.
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