When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the time capsule buried in front of my elementary school (shout out to William Tyler Page in Montgomery County, Md.)
It was planted in among an herb garden in a little square near the entrance (the smell of fresh thyme still takes me there), a stone bearing a plaque with two dates: when it was set, and when it would finally be unearthed.
I didn’t understand what it was at first, only that it seemed like some sort of treasure, or clue. When I asked my mom about it I only became more obsessed. What could be in it? Who would be alive when it was opened? (It seemed so unfathomably far away.) Who were the people who buried it in the first place? What would it teach us about them?
I don’t remember the dates — though I believe the unveiling has come and gone. That vast, unknowable future now part of the fairly recent past. But I still recall looking at it, rubbing a piece of mint I’d plucked from the space nearby, thinking there was probably some seriously weird stuff hidden down in there.
Flash to May 17, 2021, when I walked into a bit of a time capsule of my own: The cubicle I occupied from Monday to Friday for more than a decade, before stepping away for what we all believed would be a brief two weeks of remote work.
Little did we realize that it would be more than a year before we would return to the office (or that we’d all be wearing masks and have much longer hair when we did).
Aside from the anxiety of being back among other humans after 14 months of near isolation, the moment felt even more surreal thanks to the frozen-in-time state of my work space.
My planner still sat above my keyboard, open to March 2020, a dried-out pen perched on the page.
A copy of the paper — Thursday, March 19, 2020 — yellowing and brittle, to the left. A travel mug, tea bag cemented to its inside, at right. Two bottles of mustard, one of Frank’s hot sauce (now a scary burnt sienna color), a half-bag of multigrain tortilla chips and notes from the last story I was planning.
All just waiting, as though I’d dematerialized, only to reappear out of nowhere a year later.
So. Very. Strange.
It was like I’d been gone a lifetime, and also never left. As a writer I feel like I should be able to explain it better, but I haven’t found the proper words quite yet.
As my friend Malissa described pandemic time recently: Brief, but endless. A bizarro mix of days that go on forever and whole months that pass by without notice that I’ve taken to calling “The Lost Year.”
I’ve said many times during this thing that it will likely only be in retrospect that we’ll really be able to grasp how odd and disorienting and just plain peculiar this entire experience has been, personally, for each of us, and collectively as a society.
Up until now, we’ve just been adapting and responding, without any real chance to reflect and consider. The face coverings, the unnecessary politics, the loss, the change, the re-evaluations, the fear, the curiosity, the panic, the pain, the lessons, the confusion, the conflicts.
I think when at last we do get the opportunity to look back and take stock we will find that there is, indeed, some seriously weird stuff hidden down in there. Here’s hoping it teaches us something about the people we were.
Katie McDowell is the enterprise editor and lifestyles columnist for The Dominion Post. Email kmcdowell@dominionpost.com.
