PHOTO BY ANNA TRAVERSE FOGLE
This letter will be obsolete by the time you read it. I’m coming to you from the distant past, otherwise known as March 20, 2020. As of today, 30 cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) have been confirmed in the Memphis area. More are sure to come, and soon, now that we are seeing community transmission.
[Note: As of the date we are posting this online, March 25th, Shelby County has confirmed 135 cases. As of this update, on March 31, Shelby County is reporting 405 cases, including 3 deaths.]
Most months, I turn over this letter to our art department for design with days to spare before our deadline. This time around, I’ve waited until the last possible moment: We ship files to the printer today. I was hoping that, by now, some clarity might have arrived about where we are, collectively, and where we’re going. To the extent any clarity has emerged, all it’s revealed in the gathering darkness is how little we know. When will we find ourselves on the other side of all this social distancing, economic cratering; all this fear and anxiety; all this uncertainty? Who knows.
I used to tell a story about myself that I was comfortable living in uncertain, ambiguous, liminal spaces. Intellectually, I suppose that might have been true. But not like this. I’m not that advanced.
A few days ago, in the late afternoon, my husband, stepson, dog, and I — in need of fresh air and a break from the house — drove to see the cherry trees in bloom on Cherry Road, next to the Memphis Botanic Garden. A perfect early spring day, all light breezes and fresh scents and clear light. A perfect early spring day, but I have never been so uneasy taking a little stroll beneath cherry blossoms. We veered away from golfers on the cart path across the way; turned in our tracks when we saw another family coming in our direction; waited for several long minutes for an older man to pull his set of clubs from the trunk of his car, which he’d had the audacity to park but a few feet from ours.
None of us knows when, but we will emerge from this moment, or this long string of moments. We’ll be different. Anxiety will linger, for some. For many, things we took for granted — movies, theater, dining out, buying toilet paper — will seem newly luxurious. Newly lucky.
We’ll have to get used to each other again. For everyone working remotely, as our team is now, it will be an adjustment to get up, put on our shoes, and drive to the office. For the kids, it will be an adjustment to walk through school doors again, sit in little desks, and focus for precise periods of time. I know we will adjust, gratefully. Students may never have realized, until these last few weeks, just how much they actually do like going to school. Colleagues who ordinarily annoy each other suddenly miss each other, like relatives in faraway cities. I suspect there will be moments of hesitation, too — we won’t soon unlearn the habit of keeping six feet apart.
Memphis is a monthly magazine, so our content is planned far in advance. April happens to be billed as our “staycation” issue. This now feels terribly ironic and just a little bit perfect. When we initially realized that COVID-19 was on its way, we thought, well, hmm, that might just work — people won’t want to travel, but they’ll be looking for a few things to do here at home.
Even that has changed. Effective the day I am writing this, Mayor Jim Strickland has mandated that all area restaurants close their dining rooms, moving to carry-out and delivery services only. Museums have closed their doors, encouraging would-be visitors to tour their galleries virtually (#museumathome). Memphians won’t be seeing any movies or live theater or live music for a while. Not much is normal.
But there will be another side to all this. That I know for certain. I can’t tell you when it will come, or what will have changed by the time we get there. But there will come a day when you can, once again, take a seat in a downtown restaurant and enjoy a perfect brasserie meal, or go bowling, or gawk at the weirdness of chicken $#!+ bingo at Hernando's Hideaway. It will happen. In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy this magazine for the vision of Memphis it offers, and for the ideas it sparks in you for how to enjoy this city once we climb out of this strange springtime hibernation.
In the meantime, please take good care of yourselves and the people you love. We’re in this together.
Anna Traverse Fogle
CEO and Editor-in-Chief
