OPINION: The pandemic bulldozed relationships in Anchorage. Four years have passed since then, and we are entering a season of restoration.

Two years ago, I noticed a striking woman in front of me in the coffee line. She wore a camel-colored coat and vintage crystal earrings, and part of her face was hidden by a mask. I recognized her eyes. They belonged to my friend Kelly.

“Hello, friend,” I said. “You look cute today. I like your earrings.”

And it started kind of a conversation with people that I hadn’t really met in person since Before Times. This post-pandemic phase is occurring after a long period of repair. It’s similar to what happens in a community after a tornado, except instead of infrastructure, the relationships are destroyed by the disaster. For me, the feeling of being out in public was, and still is, varied from unexpected joy to subtle awkwardness to exhaustion.

Throughout 2022, I re-entered the world of strangers and distant friends with Black Cup and wrote short pieces and stories for the Anchorage Daily News as part of a collaboration with the Anchorage Museum called The Neighbors Project. After a while, when I finally stepped out of my bedroom office, the smell of breakfast burritos and the sound of old wooden chairs scraping against the floor started to feel like home. Josh, the barista, remembered my order. Terry, an ethics professor I knew at the University of Alaska Anchorage, kept the same coffee shop hours as me. As the months passed, the store became more crowded. One day, there was no place for me to sit, so he invited me to share his seat. From then on, we often sat together and joked that our table was our “office.”

That year, I wrote stories for both ADN and a public writing workshop at the museum that focused on how the pandemic had changed us. This project grew out of my experience working as a news editor during the pandemic. I thought I knew Anchorage well. I grew up here. But the level of vitriol that hit us in the early days of the pandemic felt like a loved family member suffering from mental illness. The fabric of family and relationships has been torn apart. Fear, confusion, misinformation and spite reigned, hospital beds filled with patients and deaths piling up. Some of those fractures remain.

As I reported earlier, I spoke to more than 100 people about what the pandemic was like for them. I quickly realized that all of their stories centered around essential human drives: fear, longing for connection, and sadness over disconnection. As she bid farewell to her husband, who died of COVID-19, on FaceTime, one woman said she was comforted by a stream of gifts delivered to her home by her Twitter friends. One woman took in her brother’s children while his wife was battling cancer. An isolated teenager finds hope by sharing messages of kindness while working in a drive-thru. Thousands of people in our town have experienced similar feelings of longing and loss, but never before have we been so separated.

A few days after I met Kelly at the coffee shop, a handwritten envelope arrived in my mailbox. On the cover was a quote from French philosopher Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” She had written a note inside thanking me for getting her attention. I pushed the card into the frame of the mirror.

I thought about how years of semi-isolation have refracted the way we think about ourselves. Who are we when we are invisible to our neighbors? What would happen if you didn’t have that inherent warmth you get when you meet a familiar face, even if it’s the mailman who comes by on a walk or an old friend who notices your earrings? Like Kelly, the years of the pandemic have made me feel like a ghost at times. It’s been about four years since the world went into lockdown. I’m back to many of my old routines, but I don’t know that everything feels the same – friendships, institutions, the safety of a democratic society.

This card sat in my mirror for months until I Googled Simone Weil. She was a religious mystic who focused on the power of human connection after World War I. The act of paying attention to others, empathizing with them, and just accepting them, she wrote, is akin to prayer.

“One can love one’s neighbor by emptying oneself and being ready to accept all that one is, by asking one’s neighbor, ‘What are you going through?'” Weil wrote. There is.

At the coffee shop, I told Terry that I was reading Weil. He immediately lit up and listed various ethicists’ theories about connections, and my head was filled with questions. Despite the ugliness in our public conversations right now, it’s good for democracy that people from all walks of life are protesting and organizing in support of what they want America to look like. Is that so? Would it be worse if people were apathetic? What happens to our ability to form consensus when we spend years without seeing each other’s faces? Can empathy change society?

I finished my coffee and went on an errand to buy some bread at Fire Island Bakery. I drove through the early spring sands of Midtown, and a crow swooped down the gray forest road. Every building along the street, the old Blockbuster, Taco King, even the Queens Dry Cleaners, is a treasure trove of little memories, and the interactions we pass each other have built a sense of Anchorage for me.

What kind of impact do a lifetime’s worth of small interactions with strangers and acquaintances in one place have? A conversation with a parent in the hallway of their child’s school, or someone stopping their car in an alley to let you pass. How important it is to have a conversation with your neighbor, the cashier who knows your face and asks, “Mom, how are you doing?” Can we repair the damage done to our relationships and our city with small acts of kindness and consideration, giving and receiving?

The bakery was crowded when I got there. While waiting in line, I met Janice, whose family owns the store. Ten years ago, when I came to her house right after giving birth to my son, she suddenly gave me a chocolate cake. Because, she said, a woman who gave birth deserves a present. I hadn’t seen her much for years. She noticed me in line and handed me a warm challah roll over the counter. “Cut some out,” she said. Hooray. Tasting the soft sweetness, it was no big deal and all.

Julia O’Malley and other writers will read their micro-essays on the year of the pandemic during the public reading and launch of issue 6 of Chattermarks, a museum journal that collects news articles from the Neighbors Project. The reading will begin at 6:30 p.m. March 1, Seed Lab, 111 W. Sixth Ave.

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