Panic at the Grocery

An anxious mind considers the end of lockdown

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

The first time — my first whole body, death-is-a-train-and-I’m-on-the-tracks, drop-to-the-floor-and-pray panic — was in Wegmans. There was a typical market crowd, bland music piping in, a bin of green beans before me. I had been shopping for decades without incident — competently, uneventfully, sometimes even happily. That day, however, was the latest…