The offseason in coastal Rhode Island is usually quiet. The breeze whipping off the Atlantic that draws the city folk during the oppressive heat of summer is exactly what keeps them away during the winter months. The ubiquitous clam shacks, surf shops, and ice cream parlors shutter their doors. Boxwoods, chiseled into bright green geometric shapes in the summer, wither into ugly brown knots.
Today, however, one would hardly be able to tell that it is still mid-March when walking down the seawall in Narragansett Pier, the tiny beach town where my family resides. A long sidewalk, hugging the open ocean, stretches from Monahan’s clam shack to the town beach. As in June or July, the narrow tunnel between the fence of parked cars and the rocky coast was packed with families walking, donning down jackets and scarves in place of bathing suits. It appeared that nearly all of the permanent residents of southern Rhode Island had flocked to the shore for exercise and the solace of our shared sea in this time of uncertainty.
As my dad and I joined the ranks of walkers, we sensed a new edginess. In the summer as you traverse the seawall, you must always be prepared to be bonked by a surfboard, sniffed by a sandy dog, or licked by someone’s sweaty bare skin. We watched from across the wall as two groups of walkers approached each other. A strange dance ensued. Both parties slowed as they neared. Each walker was visibly calculating whether they could maintain a six-foot berth while both remaining on the sidewalk between the cars and the sea wall. As noses and mouths grew visible, chests rose ands breaths were held. At some point, they accepted the impossibility of passing side-by-side on the four-foot-wide sidewalk. Thus, in the finale of the dance, there was a standoff. Shoulders broadened, eyes narrowed, fists clenched, until one group ceded and hopped off the sidewalk. They darted between bumpers, to pass on the road inside the line of parked cars.
I was startled by the stricture in my own chest as the displaced group neared us. The mere fact of existing in separate bodies is often enough to forget that another individual possesses an experience and perspective as rich as my own. What is further lost when we increase the physical distance between us? Or when we cloak half a face, our usual window into the inner life of another, in a mask? When a stranger becomes a viral vector first, and a neighbor second?
As we continued down the seawall, I surveyed the little sliver of ocean that has become mine over my years in Rhode Island. A thousand shades of blue were compressed into the line between the water and the sky – the flux below set against the stillness above. The open sea has always struck me as a place of refuge, the edge of normal life. Gazing into its vastness, as it churns with the emotion of the barometric pressure, is a reminder that great swaths of our planet are free from the frivolity of human affairs. At this moment, however, the sea suddenly feels more like a barricade than a haven. The virus is creeping, riding on the backs of New Yorkers and Bostoners fleeing to rental properties and summer homes, multiplying within the ranks of Rhodies. And I wait, squeezed up against the rocky coast, pressed against the edge of a world descending into panic.
Sophie Libergall is an MS1 at the Perelman School of Medicine. Sophie can be reached by email at [email protected].
