Maskerade

I’ve barely noticed the lockdown, so busy have I been sublimating any anxiety into frenzied and probably pointless activity. In the past month, I’ve made 250-odd (and I do mean odd) fabric masks. Initially they were commissioned by medical personnel to protect and prolong the use of N95 masks, and later they were requested by everyone from Native American groups to food banks to homeless shelters.

No one knows whether cloth masks shield the breather or the breathed-upon from COVID-19, but nearly everyone is required to wear one now. The utility of the masks I make, in particular, cannot be known since I work on donated fabrics—different ones on different days, none bearing any mystery as to why they were donated.

The conundrum of the masks is that the more impervious they are, the more impervious they are. In other words, a mask that allows you to breathe is not preventing disease transmission. I know more than the average person now about masks, and that means I know nothing, since the science makes no sense, and contradicts itself in any case.

But I do know one thing, if you want to know what it’s like to suffocate from COVID-19, just put on a close-fitting cloth mask and walk around for a few minutes till your muzzle is soggy, your glasses have steamed up, and your sides are aching with the effort of pushing and pulling air through your "face covering."

This crafty thing has happened to me once before. Shortly after Donald Trump was elected, my mother went through a bad patch. That meant I too went through a bad patch as her long-distance caregiver. The result: A dozen pussy hats unraveled from my knitting needles. I couldn’t stop. I gave them to my friends—and to my mother—and wore them myself. And now I use them as covers for spare toilet paper rolls.

Perhaps something similar may come of the masks—they’ll become banana wrappers, or headbands, or cellphone cradles.

In both cases, they’ll linger on, sturdy symbols of futility.



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