the fabric of things :: notes from isolation

Written 8th March 2020

Once, years ago, my sister and I went Christmas shopping with a mutual friend and, after we’d traipsed round the shops for hours – my jeans getting soggy from the rain, the instrumentals in ‘(Simply Having) A Wonderful Christmas Time’ starting to trigger a twitch in my left eye – the three of us ducked into Princes Square for dinner. Over pizza, our friend made us laugh by saying that if she hadn’t already known that E and I were related, she’d definitely have been able to tell after today because, ‘you both spend the entire time you’re in a shop - touching things!’

(Touching things, like: softing the sleeves of jumpers between our forefingers and thumbs as we passed by them, running our palms over the roughness of folded jeans, tracing fingers over the bumpy-soft-silkiness of embroidered t-shirts...)

‘You both do it,’ she said, while E and I turned – surprised – to look at each other.

‘Do we?’ we said, almost at the same time.

Of course, she was right – we’d just never noticed it before, or at least had never thought it was particularly notable. Now I catch myself at it all the time – this reaching out to feel the texture of things. I find myself doing it with books too*. I can’t walk past a copy of, say, My Name is Lucy Barton, or Rebecca, or Mrs Dalloway without running my hand over the cover as if to let it know: I love you, I remember you, you’re still my friend, hello. 

(*This fondness for book-touching is something which actually came in useful during my two-month stint as a bookseller last year when I had to be seen to be busy at every moment of the shift or suffer a stern, ‘Is everything alright, Melissa?’ from a manager I hadn’t realised was watching me from the stairs. ‘Oh, yes,’ reaching over and moving a stack of Olive Kitteridges a fraction of an inch to neaten the pyramid, ‘Yep, all good here – everything’s a-okay.’)

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I took this picture of D (my nearly-two-year-old niece) back in February: the first time I noticed her doing it too. E and I had brought her into TKMaxx with us while we looked out a present for our Mum’s birthday and as the three of us shuffled around the homeware section – looking up and down the aisles for a lavender candle – D kept wiggling her fingers to make me let go of her hand. She’d gasp and break free, running ahead of me – stomping in her grey rabbit-boots – before stopping abruptly in front of things (pillows, soup bowls, storage boxes, towels), pointing at each item with one finger then, inching closer, reaching out to touch, touch, touch them all.

‘Buooo,’ she’d say, tapping the blue things. ‘Ack!’ at the black ones.

It’s probably symptomatic of me being a very fond aunt that I find everything that small long-haired child does Extremely Interesting. I know this compulsion to touch each and every thing in sight isn’t unique to D; she’s a toddler and – sure – it’s probably a developmental stage you could read about in a book somewhere (‘feeling the world to better understand it’ or something). Lots of children do it. But even so, it made both of us happy to catch her at it.

‘That’s how you can tell she’s one of us,’ E said as we watched her trailing her tiny hand along the cushions. (Soft ones. Scratchy ones. Green ones. Pink.)

I smiled at her.

One of us. Me and her.

‘I hope she doesn’t grow out of it.’

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Postscript added 26th March 2020

It’s strange to think that I wrote this just a few weeks ago, sitting – back then – with my laptop in a quiet corner of the IKEA restaurant. At the time, I found myself wondering whether what I’d just written was a bit trite and, when it was time to head home, I’d closed the Word document down, frustrated, because that wasn’t how it was meant to come out.

Now, just a few weeks later, I’m not sure when I’ll next see my sister or niece in person - and the act of even going into a shop, never mind actually touching any of the items in there, seems laced with danger. Rereading these words now, I find myself thinking: this story’s an infection-control nightmare! (Recaption that photo, ‘How to Leave a Trail of Germs in Your Wake’ or ‘How Curiosity Kills the Cats.’)

But, also – who’d have thought feeling safe enough to reach out and touch a cushion could be something a person could take for granted?

I wonder whether that impulse to feel things will still be there when all this is over. I ordered a second-hand book online last week but when it was delivered yesterday, I noticed myself shrinking from it. It’s one of those pleasantly floppy books – the kind I’d usually enjoy holding and squishing in my hands a few times before starting to read – but, even after spraying the cover with bleach, I can’t bring myself to touch it. So, yeah – I’m not convinced that urge is going to come rushing back.

As much as I’d like to think we’ll all go back to normal when this is over, I know there’s bound to be some fallout. Fear is a quick thing to pick up and a slow thing to let go of. I hope though, for D’s sake, that many things will become part of the fabric of everyday life again. I don’t mean shopping trips with all their opportunities for sinking hands into cotton. I more mean things like:

the warmth of another’s hand on hers, offering peace;
or the bump of shoulders – ‘oh, sorry’, laughing – when walking next to a friend;
or the rumble under her feet on a busy subway carriage – toes clenched to stay balanced – and the heat that comes from standing so close to strangers they’re almost touching her: feeling hot, maybe, and cramped, maybe – ready to get off the train and climb up and up and up, shins burning, into the fresh cool air again – feeling all those things, yes:

but not unsafe.