1. 1. A predictable, regular world (including going to work, kids going to school and getting to be regular teenagers, being able to wander in TJ Maxx or the thrift store, eating in a restaurant, taking taxis, and having a mundane daily schedule)
   2. Being with friends
   3. Seeing, hearing, and performing Live Music and Theatre
   4. Travel, particularly flying places
   5. Not feeling so distraught about the state of the nation and its leadership
   6. Hugs
   7. Family, particularly seeing parents
   8. The movies
   9. Cocktail Bars
   10. Going on dates
   11. Drinking less
   12. The gym
   13. Buffets
   14. In person church services
       

Ann Powers, a music critic for NPR, wrote to me that she misses the ability to feel good around people who likely have very different political views that music concerts enable: “especially at country music shows, I could get into a zone where I felt connected to people in a crowd who might be visibly displaying social and political stances I don’t espouse, because we’d all be united singing along to some song.” Unfortunately, she says, she can’t imagine that anymore. 

Are we really in a place now where even music cannot tear down our boundaries? She is right. I have had to break off contact with some of my oldest friends because their complacent racism cannot be dismissed with a laugh and shrug. It never could. I have to be honest, I have come to a place where I do not think I can budge on this question. I know that my implacability does not foster dialogue, but it is time now for the other side to come to us.

By the way, the thing I miss the most are the movies. My children could care less; everything is streamable at home, after all. But there is something magical about the dark, cool theatre and the grand cinema, larger than life, that cannot be replicated on my couch. I pray that the theatres will come back.

I also just miss not being here. My husband told me this morning that he can see my “pilgrim soul starting to clang against the bars.” You know things have gotten weird when going to your office at work feels like liberating, risky behavior. I used to travel in the Middle East alone and brave men with machine guns to get into archives. Now I feel rebellious when I pick up takeout from the Egyptian café downtown.

And I am one of the lucky ones. Another 1.3 million people applied for new jobless benefits last week. I bet we could guess what they miss if we asked them. 19.3 million people are now received unemployment benefits, all while we hit a new weekly high of 60,000 in COVID cases.

Note

[1] Xiaobing Tang, Chinese Modern: The Heroic and the Quotidian (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2000), 5.