Love is Actually

I had to make a quick pickup at the mall this evening, which is a lie, because even in pandemic times, a quick pickup at the mall in peak holiday shopping season on a Friday night is One. Big. Oxymoron. The holiday rush was so different, still loud and rushy, but it was masked up and spaced apart.

When I saw the Mall Santa wearing his shielded mask, sitting six feet behind the bench where children could supposedly meet him, something caught in my throat and I found myself oddly choking back tears. Shuffling by, I tried to unpack why I was so moved by the Socially Distanced Santa. I think it was partly due to how dystopian all this seemed, and how frankly unfair it is to the kiddies. We could have given them a virus-free holiday season as they are able to in, say, Australia which has effectively beat the ‘VID. I’m mourning the holiday that could have been.

But the Socially Distanced Santa also reminded me of the scene from “Love, Actually” when all the anonymous people are hugging in Heathrow Airport. We hear Hugh Grant intone that “Love is…actually…all around.” In spite of the film’s problematic relationship with curvy women, I’m a fan of the ways that it normalizes turtlenecks for all mankind, as well as its dismantling of the hierarchy of people needing love. Yes, the Prime Minister gets lonely. Yes, the widow and Claudia Schiffer and the married couple and the folks living in developmental care facilities are all dying to be well-loved. If we train our eyes to see, so says Hugh Grant, we’ll see the love all around.

I’d like to add a Covid in America Asterisk to that adage, if I may. In this quaky season before anyone on the stateside is vaccinated, I think it’s important not just to look for love, but to look for opportunities to love. Those are actually all around. They are found in the spare change jars we’ve been meaning to empty and turn into gift cards for the mail carriers and crossing guards. They are in the shoebox of stationery we’ve been meaning to bust open to write a letter to our granny in the home. They are in all the places we can exercise extra patience. True, no one can see our smile because it’s hidden by a mask, but that, too, is an opportunity to show love.

As for self-love, I will attest that I’ve been staring at this same mug for 40 years and, well, I don’t fully know how to love that lady. But she is looking for ways to love being herself. I can’t imagine learning to love being alive in one’s own body and not wanting it for one’s neighbor. Maybe it’s a radical notion, but wouldn’t we want for others the same measure of love we have experienced? Self-love, when it translates to love of being oneself, wants for others to be a part of that whole joyful equation. Self-love negates itself when it does not show that same love for others. In other words, stay home, drink egg nog, look for ways to love from a safe distance so that Mall Santa can live his best life next year and get back to handing out candy canes and judging kiddies’ wishes for ponies.