There's a photograph my wife took in Mexico City recently, it reminds me of just how quickly we’ve shifted from a normal world to a dangerous and confusing new reality.

It was just before Christmas, and my wife and I were on our way to the National Museum of Anthropology, strolling under the large awnings set up along the sidewalks of the Paseo de la Reforma, when she gave my hand a little tug. There, among the bustling stream of vendors hawking tacos and caldos and tlayudas, sandwiched between nativity displays, hung a sign that read “tamales.”  

My heart jumped. We looked at each other with knowing grins, and approached the lady behind the makeshift counter, who smiled and asked "tamales? Colorado or mole?"

We looked at the lady and said “Sí, señora, uno de colorado y uno de mole, por favor.” She handed each of us a plate and a plastic fork, and gestured to a table on the other side of the tent. I unwrapped the banana leaf and dug into my tamale. With each bite, the light, flaky masa fused with the tiny tender bits of pork and the mole colorado in a culinary trinity of joy. My face beamed, and my wife snapped the picture. Until then, we'd seen a lot of food, but no tamales. I could hardly believe our luck, and it showed.

Barely a month later the virus hit, and now, as my wife and I shelter at home in San Francisco, waiting out the outbreak, talk has turned to how good those tamales were, and how much we miss Mexican food, and our once regular trips to favorite local eateries like Cafe Red and El Tonayense, and El Farolito. In response, my wife and I have planned an entire week of Mexican dishes at home, including green chile enchiladas, pozole, and albondigas soup.

Now more than ever, it seems like a snapshot of a forbidden world. In the shadow of the current crisis, it evokes strong feelings about the deep, vital connections that bind us together, about the fragility of those connections, and about the need for solidarity.

As Mexico has a strong presence across America and in nearly every country in the world, so too, America, Asia and Europe have a strong presence in Mexico. The cross-border community that started as a purely regional phenomenon has expanded to the furthest corners of the United States, and, in fact, the world. Beyond the thriving Mexican communities in nearly every state in the nation, you can now get versions of Mexican food across Asia, Europe and the rest of the world.

Just beyond the tamale cart in the photo, are legions of other food carts, restaurants and eateries slinging carne asada, barbacoa, and al pastor. In the space of those same few blocks, you will also find myriad Asian eateries serving bibimbap, kung pao chicken and ramen. Pull back a bit, and that area resembles the world at large. There is an interconnectedness, an interreliance, and a mutual vitality that comes with diversity. In many senses, the world resembles one giant cross-border community.

Cross-border community now means more than just burritos in Georgia and Shanghai, or sushi in Sonora; it means global cross-cultural influence. It means a world that literally touches us all. We see it in the spread of the virus, and in our response against it.

We are all in this together. All of us. As North Americans, whether we live in Canada, the United States of America, or the United States of Mexico, we are all literally just a few degrees of separation from each other, and from our brothers and sisters in Wuhan, and Milan, and Tehran, and they from us.

That simple spontaneous tourist photo reminds me that a world we all knew just a few weeks ago is gone for now, but might still endure. I want more than ever to return to that world. To walk in its museums, to eat on its sidewalks, to talk with its people.

I want to see people back in Taqueria Cancún, and El Faro  and in Alice’s, a local Chinese restaurant in San Francisco that uses freshly made flour tortillas instead of traditional crepe pancakes for its moo shu dishes, and where people, including me, are very much okay with that.

Sitting at home, hiding from the spread of this invisible virus that threatens us all, I think about this as I look more and more longingly at that photo of a much happier me eating Christmas tamales on Paseo de la Reforma. I want more happy pictures, more tamales. For that, the whole world must be safe and healthy. I hope that that world is in our future.