Luke Winkie: Short-lived euphoria

My girlfriend and I wasted no time this spring. As soon as the Moderna vaccination fever left our bodies in May, we gleefully quadruple-booked every empty weekend left on the calendar. The itinerary swelled beyond precedent. Weddings, birthdays, family reunions and no-occasion rooftop hangs gridlocked into one another, evoking a logistical crisis every evening. I chilled in the cheap seats at Citi Field, sucked in the stale air at the Alamo Drafthouse and drove to both northern and southern Vermont in the span of three weeks. The world was in bloom, and both of us were desperate to witness it firsthand.

In retrospect, maybe we should’ve been more aware of the precarity. Only fools underestimate COVID after our extended stay in hell, especially as the threat of the variants morphed from an irritating paranoia to a very disappointing reality.