A New Normal?

This started out as a post about loneliness. Because I can’t imagine that my feelings of loneliness, even in a house full of human beings and never actually being alone as we’re quarantined, are unique to me. Or the crushing sadness I feel for people who are truly alone right now. My mother, a widow, alone, unable to get together with her friends. My friend’s mom, also a widow, also alone. Another friend’s mom, in a nursing home. How do you explain to someone with dementia why no one is coming to visit them anymore? That kind of loneliness is gut wrenching to imagine. Sick people dropped off at a hospital’s emergency room, left alone in the hospital as their loved ones go home to worry. Alone. Missing my own friends so much it feels suffocating at times, but not really knowing how to connect the way I want, so avoiding more than I should. Thinking of kids who are missing their own friends. Yet, I have  no solution and I’m not sure I have anything insightful to say about it other than to acknowledge that I have these feelings and you probably do too and they don’t really feel great.

So instead it became a post about “the new normal.” On the first night of this year (in what feels like another lifetime ago), my husband suffered a heart attack, sudden cardiac arrest and then later had open heart surgery. In the weeks that followed, I was told, “It’ll be okay, you’ll find your new normal.” And I really wasn’t sure what that looked like, but I guess as we developed new habits and routines, we kind of did. And now, just 12 short weeks later, we’re all trying to find “our new normal” in the face of a global pandemic. Characters in books, after going through some major life change, often “find their new normal.” But truthfully? I don’t really want a new normal, I want my old normal back. I want my comfortable normal from December 31st, 2019 or even March 13th, 2020 back. A normal that wasn’t filled with fear or sadness or loneliness. I had it pretty sweet…mostly empty nester learning how to maneuver life with my husband in the “kids done or almost done with college mode.” We would go out to eat, travel a little, laugh a lot, we had routines. But as Mick so eloquently said, “You can’t always get what you want,” and that sure seems to be the case with this. So what is our new normal? What does that even mean? How do we know when we’re there? Do we stay there? Is that it? We fall into new routines. Are the routines and rhythms of a household in isolation really the new normal?

But that’s not even what this post is about. What this post is actually about, or what’s on my mind right now, is this: What happens when we’re done doing what we’re doing right now? So much has changed. And so quickly. We’ve learned new ways to do our jobs. New ways to do school. New ways to connect. New ways to patronize restaurants. New ways to interact with our families. New ways to slow down. New ways to be. New ways to think. We’ve learned that we can get by without so many things. We’ve learned that in the face of scary, challenging stuff, we can have days where we’re productive and things feel, dare I say, “normal,” and we can have days where we feel off and not so productive and we’ve learned that both are okay. We’ve learned that funny memes are sometimes just the thing to get us through hard days and the upside to social media is that it can help us not feel as alone as we might otherwise feel.

But when the stay at home orders are lifted and the pandemic fears have died down, what happens? I mean, after we do the things we've missed, like get a haircut or go for coffee with a friend. Do we go right back to the way things were? Does the hustle and bustle of LBC (Life Before Covid) ramp right back up? This virus has taken so much from so many: loved ones, jobs, health, security, human connection. And at the same time, it’s given much: fear, yes, but also time to think, time with family that felt like it had been lost forever, time to breathe, new ways to connect, time to reflect on what really matters, time to get outside. How do we take the good parts of now and combine them with the good parts of LBC? Do the calls and need for human connection and kindness stick?

Maybe this post is about the “new normal,” after all. Because it seems like the new normal can, no, should, include parts of the old normal. The smell of freshly cut grass on a pretty spring day. A stunning full moon on a clear night. A song on your playlist that makes you smile; or a song that makes you cry. That feels normal. And right. And good. Making dinner. Night, after night, after night (this, is definitely new for me!). Seeing a little girl run through a sprinkler in a bathing suit while holding a polka dotted umbrella and squealing with laughter. Maybe the two normals eventually morph into something that just feels like life is moving forward. Maybe not the way we intended, but still in a forward motion and it becomes this thing that we all experienced and will never forget and that will shape our futures in a way that we really can’t imagine, yet.