Remember when this all began?

Do you remember what you were eating when you first stacked up two weeks’ worth of groceries? I do.

As we find ourselves approaching the seventh month of a freak snowless snow day, then a long vacation, and now a warped alternate reality, I feel the need to reach for a lifeline of solid, edible matter: cheese.

I believe my emotional evolution through the pandemic can be told through the rich folds and blue veins of fromage, and I would like to share it with you. Why? Who has the time? Oh, right. All of us, all the time now.

March: Cheddar

Everyone has their “Where was I when things shut down” story.

For me, it was in a house that wasn’t mine with a dog who wasn’t mine. Over spring break in my last semester of grad school (best year ever to graduate!!!), I agreed to dog-sit for a comedy community friend in Studio City, Los Angeles. The dog was a sweet, aging Aussie shepherd named Ruby. Ruby started walks with a bounce in her step for about ten steps. Then she sniffed and creaked along the pavement as we slowly explored the block.

My school had already called off classes, so my cohort and I were pitched into this strange “see ya never / on Zoom” territory. A day or two into watching Ruby (which involved much cuddling and Gilmore Girls), LA itself shut down almost every business and ordered everyone to stay at home as much as possible. You know the drill, that totally weird ghost town we’ve come to accept. My last foray at Whole Foods felt like doomsday. The lines snaked across the prepared foods section, which had become a scary dare zone. A gregarious, friendly woman (who turned out to be a live music events producer — hope she’s doing okay) and I chatted even as I wondered if her face was transferring virus particles to my face. A crooked old man in line told us very slow jokes, and we hung on every word. We were all afraid of what was to come and clung to each other in casual conversation.

I leaned into cheddar at this time. Cheddar is solid and comforting, but it also carries a sharpness that pokes you with reality. I needed that edge, and afterward the oozy balm of quesadilla melt to cover my wounds. Reality sucks, sometimes. I would say that we have no choice but to accept it, but we do have a choice. I tend to fall into the extra sharp cheddar category of facing the truth of our situation. I’ll admit, though, that a sweet Dubliner cheddar has called my name from time to time.

April: Mozzarella

Now came the first wave of overwhelm. It’s not new anymore. It’s stretching onward. There’s no particular end in sight, but it hasn’t been that long. It feels temporary, like an extended cruise. Thank god I’m not on a cruise ship.

My roommate has not come home. Her father is high-risk, so she roots herself at her parents’ house. This means I walk in circles in a two-bedroom casita in LA, thinking and thinking on how to finish my thesis — then panicking and panicking on what the hell I’m going to do when I graduate. You don’t get unemployment for being a student.

I watched all of Barry, stayed up 24 hours a few times revising my thesis script, and started a somewhat intense online rekindling with an ex in NYC, all while not knowing when I’ll see my family or friends again in person. My soul has been scraped clean. The reflection that’s necessary for writing takes me from puddles to deep lakes of existential pondering. It feels like my life was a cord that got cut open, and now all the wires are splaying in different directions. I could take any path, as long as I have a computer or a phone to communicate. It doesn’t matter where I am. First questions first- am I?

This state called for mozzarella. Maybe I can’t do this. Maybe I can’t survive. Maybe I am facing a long, hard, rocky road ahead when my pile of financial aid runs out. Thank you, got it. Mozzarella, give me shelter. You are creamy, a pillow for my tongue and my consciousness. When I eat you, I am wholly this moment of blank white almost-no-flavor. Thank you for being pure, uncluttered, and uncomplicated. Thank you for donning my pizza after I finally got my hands on some yeast. Thank you for being you — I fear nobody will say when I’m ejected from school into the ether of the un-employment landscape.

May: A Little Parm?

To be honest, I barely remember what I ate in May. This is because I barely ate in May.

Some very kind friends had started commissioning baked goods from me. While I made decadent quiches, pies, and brownies for them, the pounds dropped from my body. I ran and drank coffee and orange juice from backyard oranges. I searched for jobs with futility. Near the month’s end, I felt conflicted about going to protests during a pandemic. The online relationship intensified, and we tried to figure out how to meet without being reckless.

One of the food-commission friends told me her company was hiring like wildfire during the pandemic. They’re a health supplement distributor. It was a job answering emails from customers.

I graduated on May 17th and started training in their office on May 18th. It felt unreal that, somehow, I would be able to support myself this… year? This era? How long will this go on? How will I enter the entertainment industry when nobody can shoot anything?

The training was in-person, for some reason, so it was a three-week semi-rollercoaster of contagion stress mixed with intensifying protests and riots, which ended up sealing the deal in the last week. They sent us home with a work computer and “Stay on top of Slack”. Thrown in the deep end of remote work. It was fine, mind-numbing even, and it continues to be.

I think I remember a little parm grated on pasta that I brought to the office. Dry, slight pungency, a little musty. Like my brain.

I drank a lot of coffee from their cappuccino maker, too. Does milk count as some evolution of cheese?

June: Nothing.

June is when I personally hit pandemic rock-bottom. I doubted that I was real. Trying to do video calls with my rekindled flame felt like labor in which he talked at me, probably because of the video delay. He also insisted that he wasn’t insisting I come to NYC, but he also said no to every other suggestion. I began to read his pickiness as rejection. If you wanted to see me, wouldn’t you make it happen?

As if my body were demonstrating the off-ness of the situation, I would start a meal and trail off, still hungry but undetermined to meet my needs. I wanted to end it with him, but then I also felt like I didn’t really know because we had not re-met in person. Plus I felt the pull to go somewhere, anywhere? My mind rendered my house and lovely backyard, such gifts at the beginning, as a very large coffin or airless terrarium. After a fight with the flame about who would go where to make our rendez-vous happen, I spiraled into a total meltdown. I wish that meltdown had included cheese.

I’m an introvert, but I felt the pain of missing people in a visceral way. I’m sure we all did. Some of us, right away. Some of us, after four months. What was your timeline?

I left Hangouts for distant hangs. Must. See. People. I found a protest compromise by going to small, road-side ones in Sherman Oaks. The elbow bumps lifted my soul, but I felt myself being uprooted still. Profound exhaustion filled me.

I went to sleep one night and knew I would wake up either ready to end it with him or dive in.

July: Fine Cheeses.

I should say right now that I suppose my job could find this if they wanted to search my name on the internet. I suppose I could ask them for forgiveness in this paragraph. Please forgive me. I was dying in LA.

I know some people have literally died this year, and I ask their forgiveness, too, for my hyperbole.

I hopped on a plane to NYC at the end of June. Underneath my willingness to try it, I didn’t expect anything to work out with this dude, but I did expect something to change.

The city that had stayed cautious for months was gradually re-blossoming with a much lower population count. The romance came and went, mostly went. One day in the midst of heartbreak, I looked so upset that the cashier at the dollar store asked me if I was okay.

But the splendor of NYC and the glamorous variety it has to offer shone through this dim period. Businesses were popping open their doors like toadstools out of moss. I started to eat again. My body reclaimed the right to be happy and myself. I felt NY around me do the same.

An amazing Italian grocer, Saraghina, was the perfect stroll from my Airbnb, not too near and not too far. I indulged in cheese after cheese, a new cheese each week. Oh, how about this creamy sheep knob? Sure! Or a complex, nutty mixed hard cheese? Okay! Just chevre? Let’s do it!

Each new cheese was a slice of variety. I would wager that many of us sorely needed variety at this point.

August: Alpine with Ash.

With Covid exploding throughout the Sunbelt, I couldn’t bring myself to leave NY. So I didn’t. If you want to find a room, you can find a room.

August felt like almost pure outdoors. Every minute I spent on a computer would rebound in a minute spent at the park.

The green spaces and waterside stretches of Greenpoint, BK bubbled with life and activity. Practically an air popper of people, blankets, food, and music, all spaced out, in various stages of masked-ness.

Cheese was shared in open air with wine and kombucha. I enjoyed waiting on the bench outside The Monger’s Palate for my turn to go in and have a cheese consult. I didn’t stick to one type, but there was a theme of hearty, vigorous cheeses with a little give. An alpine cheese with ash was particularly memorable. A dark stripe ran through its weighty bod, the texture satisfying as carving through wet sand. It was a sensual month for me. I hope for you, too.

September: What Now?

September cheeses have been less frequent. I feel in a period of indecision. Approaching austerity. I made homemade mac ’n’ cheese one time with an aged cheddar. That old chestnut. That’s a phrase my friend Julia would say. She’s in LA. I miss her. I miss everybody.

What cheese is next? That question echoes how many of us feel as we approach the twilight season of 2020.

Could this year possibly become more volatile? More violent? Could it contain more change, more death and worry? Could it contain renewal?

I know that the next cheese phase will come. I’ll feel it. I’ll know it when I see it, or smell it. Until then, I can’t make plans besides my next step. At times, it feels like I’m walking through a fire. This fire torches my self-doubt, my need to be in control, and my need to peer so far into the future that my head pops off. In a way, 2020 is a radical fondue of transformation — for some of us — those of us who have survived, even stayed afloat.

Time is a wheel of cheese that we circle. Let’s hold the present cheese in our hands and remember the ways that we are fortunate.