Nostalgia

Zara coat (similar)
Noul sweater (similar)
Mango jeans
Aldo boots (similar)
Chanel handbag
Zara sunglasses (similar)
Elizabeth Lyn Jewelry necklace (c/o) (similar)
Mango earrings
Location: Frank Fisher Studio – Chicago, Illinois

I never imagined that I might find myself looking back on the last weeks of my life and feeling nostalgia, but here we are… As I write this on a quiet Tuesday evening, I count back to the last time I left my apartment to do anything other than quickly pick up groceries. It was eleven days ago. Life in other parts of the world had already changed dramatically, but for us it went on as normal. We’d been back from Chicago for a couple of weeks, and I was planning to fly to Edmonton to meet with a client a few days later.

…but then, just like that, everything changed. We knew it was coming, of course. I went out for drinks one last time twelve days ago. I’d been trying to embrace spontaneity more in 2020, making more spur of the moment plans. (Even if they required me to put make-up on during the work week.) When I stepped into the bar, I marvelled at how many people were out enjoying life like nothing had changed. Because in truth, it already had – I’d spent the week making sure all my staff could work from home, because that would become mandatory by the following week – and I knew it. We all did. There were no hugs, although we tried to joke about that. But there was no hiding the fact that we were careful to wash our hands when we arrived, and again before we left; careful to avoid touching anything too often.

The nostalgia struck me that same night, as I reflected on the freedom I’d had for so long – freedom that was about to be taken for the greater good, that I didn’t know when I might get back. And it comes back to me now, as I prepare the photos for this post. We were on our way to the rooftop bar at London House in Chicago when we quickly snapped them. When we arrived at the bar, it was packed, all of the surfaces sticky with spilled drinks. We touched countless elevator buttons, doorknobs and counters, thinking nothing of it.

Thinking nothing of it. That’s what I feel nostalgia for – it isn’t really the going out, or even the travel, although of course I’m sorry to have temporarily lost those things. What I really miss, what I can’t believe I lost so quickly, is the ability to walk safely through my life without worrying about how every choice I make could impact my own health and the health of those around me. (Now, I barely touch a doorknob in my own apartment without washing my hands.) It was a beautiful luxury that I look absolutely for granted. When I think of all the things I touched on this day alone, never considering who else might have touched them first, I can only shake my head.

I know this nostalgia will pass. The time we need to stay inside will likely drag on, but it won’t last forever. Nothing does. We will get back to a life that resembles what we knew to be normal. But I’m not sure that I will ever feel quite so readily able to take my good health for granted as I did just four weeks ago.

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