We have grown used to masks now, those of us who wear them. It took a while. The first time I looped one self-consciously around my ears, it felt all wrong, like wearing a piece of underwear in public.
But on a good day, wearing a mask brings strangers oddly closer. For one thing, I’ve noticed we’ve begun to wave to each other. I wave at the man behind the fish counter, older couples braving sidewalk ice arm in arm, dogs in fake fur, any child in a stroller in a grocery aisle. Not a single one of them is known to me.
Everyone except the dogs waves back. It’s a friendly acknowledgment of our mutually undesirable circumstance, as if the waves were holding their own conversation. “Neither of us finds the situation ordinary,” one says. “Whoever you are, we have this in common.” So, hello stranger, and goodbye.
Like singing in different keys, there are many renditions: the exuberant whole-arm wave; the demure, nonintrusive wrist wave; the tentative, the bold. Elders usually wave low, with dignity. Children wave high, like they’re holding flags. Those of us in this part of the country are known to be reserved and self-contained. Masks have made it worse. Waving has made it better.
We are searching for ways to hold ourselves together in these times. A friend of mine recently had a wave encounter on the daily walk she began to take as a form of coping. It was deeply satisfying. She walks the same route — its sameness is comforting — and after a while she noticed a stranger walking in the opposite direction. They passed in their masks for many days without glancing up.
Eventually (and who writes the specifics of this social etiquette?), they began to acknowledge each other with nods. Then came the waves — small at first, gradually more wholehearted. She found herself looking forward to these moments of compatriotism.
Finally, one day, the stranger called out to her. It was surprising to hear her voice, a little thrilling.
“You can’t see my face,” the stranger yelled, from the proper medical distance, “but I’m smiling at you.”
Elissa Ely is a psychiatrist.