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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/04/2020 (1992 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the snow comes, it blankets the trees and whips its veil over streets, for a while obscuring the only view of Winnipeg I’ve held since the pandemic began. When it melts, minutes later, it leaves watery streaks on my window, like a painting of weather to decorate the tedium of another undifferentiated day.

This is how I know the world now, through windows. The windows at the fast-food drive-thru, the windows at my house. The windows of my car as I inch out from my back lane.

A few cars buzz past, and for the first time in my life, I wonder where they’re going.

Are they essential workers? If not, what are they doing? Where is there even to go anymore, other than a grocery store or the other handful of places that have the things that sustain us? Do they have a need to leave their house or, are they just like me, aching to get out and, if nothing else, just drive around?

As I turn onto Academy Road, I realize that, between working from home and venturing only to the grocery store down the street, this is the first time I have ventured more than 800 metres from my door in more than three weeks.

It’s a strange feeling to realize the city is where I left it; everything in its place. Yet somehow, it’s different.

The eeriest part of the pandemic has been in the way every time you leave the house, you discover something that’s changed in big or subtle ways. One day, you stroll into the grocery store; the next, you stand in a line that snakes around outside, waiting to be handed a sanitized cart.

As I cruise around the city, the little changes grab my attention. The rows of pickup bins outside a big-box store. The signboards in front of businesses that read simply, “We Are Open,” often followed by an exclamation mark, serving as both promise and plea.

Everything feels tense where it is public.

At the airport, the arrivals concourse is silent; four planes land in the last hour, likely with few passengers aboard. There are few things so unsettling as the sight of a place made for movement that sits mostly still.

Outside Polo Park, a city bus pulls up to its stop, idles for a few minutes, then lurches away, empty.

In the parking lot, I sit, surveying the scene. Stripped of all movement, the mall spreads out as a dead space, squat and unlovely. Expanses of concrete surround looming bare walls, more a megalith now than a mecca, a monument to the suspended life we vaguely call “normal.”

I was at the mall not too long ago. It seems strange now; I haven’t thought about clothes in weeks. Their appeal diminishes when one is not being seen. Turns out, two pairs of sweats and an old Megadeth T-shirt are all I really need.

Maybe it was never about what was being bought, but more about the act of browsing and choosing and buying. Shopping itself was an indulgence, a balm to soothe pliable time; we did it because we could. The mall was somewhere to go; it was something to do that required little particular preparation.

I open the door and gingerly step outside my car. There is nobody around for a few hundred metres or more, but walking around free like this still feels wrong. The city is not ours anymore, in the way that it was. What innocence belonged to those days of just weeks ago, to spill through the world so carefree?

There is a sign on the mall doors: “Due to circumstances beyond our control…” If you squint a little, it can read as poetry more than mere euphemism. Public health officials tell us the fate of the pandemic is in our hands, how Manitobans react will determine its course, we can save the future by following the rules.

That’s true, of course, and yet it feels so helpless on an individual level.

All most of us can do is retreat and watch the world from behind windows, and spread at least two metres apart. All most of us can do is sit on the couch, surrender to circumstances beyond our control, and hope too many people don’t die.

In an ashtray nearby, a single old cigarette butt shares space with a Tim Hortons cup and a pair of discarded nitrile gloves.

There’s a story there, a small one, but outside of the drama on the front lines of the fight. Most of the stories that break the monotony now are small ones. For a few minutes, I stand spinning out its possible threads: a worker of some kind, here for a smoke and a momentary escape from the strangeness of it all.

Someday, this too shall pass. The virus will reach its peak and retreat, and the malls will reopen and the airports will belch clouds of travellers with each plane that lands. It will take far longer to shake off this sensation of disruption, to mend the dislocated bones of a society interrupted, to soothe the aching smallness of lives in isolation.

At The Forks, the parking lot is empty, save for a hatchback. Two men are inside eating takeout. On a screen, a cheery tourism video plays to nobody, interspersed with ads for restaurants that are closed, hotels that are empty, and outdoor attractions we are now officially discouraged from visiting.

Every so often, a young woman pops up on the screen, inviting viewers into the nearby visitor information centre.

“Come inside,” she says, brightly. “Let us help you find your…”

I roll down my window to make out the rest, but the recorded voice slips away in the wind. Something about a Manitoba adventure, I think. Something about discovering places unseen. Something about a world that spanned open and full of promise, asking to be touched with both hands and explored without hesitation.

All of that is still out there. None of it has gone away. The forests tremble into spring; the artifacts in museums pass time heedless to the absence of viewers. Yet for now, the visitor information centre sits dark behind its tall windows, filled with the ghosts of a freedom long taken for granted, but always more fragile than it seemed.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca