Invasion of the Cat Lady Snatchers

Watching 70s horror on Criterion with Grace, drinking ginger tea, wearing a velvet robe, smiling. Because today one neighbor in my building lent me a wonderful book, another installed a new paper towel dispenser in my kitchen, and I helped a third fetch groceries. Which is to say: I feel bathed in care. There have been so many terrible things about 2020, but one wonderful thing is that for the first time in my 27 years as a New Yorker, I have let down my guard and connected to people who live in close proximity to me. Trust me: This is a major shift for this proud domestic isolationist. What happened was this: when the pandemic got real, the annoying millennials in my building left and ones I hadn’t known were lovely stayed and more lovely people moved in, and at first we all acted like a team out of necessity and now we’re just friends with our own text message thread even. I’m sure I’ll be the scary cat lady again at some point when they’re loud and I’m sleeping but for now I have traded the luxury of NYC anonymity for something warmer and cozier, and I am safer and a little more happily seen as a result. This seems like a metaphor for something not bad, it really does. And in a year of so much pain and so much loss and so many cold hearts, all mitzvahs deserve mention and anything not bad must be embraced. That got simpler, anyway.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy