Tag: Memoir

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It’s been a year

This entry is part 11 of 11 in the series COVID-19

I received the first dose of Pfizer vaccine this morning, exactly a year since the shutdown. The timing was completely coincidental. Still, it will help me to remember the day for years to come.

After my appointment at a pharmacy across the street from Port Authority Bus Terminal, I walked uptown along 8th Avenue. The sidewalks that used to be crowded with tourists were almost empty. Some locals were out for their morning brews. A few others, wearing their ID tags, headed to work.

“Rush-hour” traffic moved politely like a small-town parade. Without the delivering trucks blocking the view, one could see buildings on both sides of streets from one end of Manhattan to the other—something unthinkable. Colorless store closing signs replaced eye-catching promotional ones. Table settings of restaurants looked like long-abandoned stage sets. What haunted me the most was the absence of sounds and smells.

I made a stop at Whole Foods. Masks, disinfecting stations and shields have long been part of the new routine. Supply and demand seemed to be balanced. The prices of the goods quietly went up.

According to the weather forecast, we will have the warmest day since the beginning of the year. Hopefully, with spring quickly approaching, the city will gradually regain its charm.

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First chill

After a short but scorching heatwave, rain brought us moisture and cool temperatures. The first cool days in August always remind me of my first month in the States—almost four decades ago.

Taipei’s winter was damp and chilly; summer humid and hot. One would not notice much about the spring if not because of the non-stop rain. Autumn was a season that we read about in books. Even though we celebrate it eating moon cakes.

I arrived in Cleveland, Ohio on August 9, 1983. Right away, I noticed that, even in mid-August, the average temperature was much tolerable in Northern America. Some nights, I needed a light blanket.

Before I fully settled in, three days in a row, the temperature stayed in the 70s. Although I did bring some heavier clothing, I was not supposed to need them so soon. For the first time in my life, I understood the expression “changing of seasons.”

Nothing prepared me for the brilliant foliage in the autumn; for the icy snow in the winter; and the rebirth of the earth in the spring. By the end of the following summer, my education on the four seasons was complete. With it, I had a new appreciation of the infinity of the universe and my own small place in it.