WE YEARN FOR NORMAL
But our lives have been fundamentally changed by a year of loneliness and loss
The memories run deep from that mid-March day in 2020, driving around Milwaukee after the country had all but shut down overnight.
The streets were empty; their signs and traffic lights directing no one. An eerie silence filled the airport concourses. Fear dominated every conversation, from a south side Milwaukee bakery to a north side coffee shop.
“We are all worried about the virus,” Lavalle Rimmer, manager of Coffee Makes You Black, said that day, in a shop that was empty of customers. “They don’t know the cure. Everyone is scared of it.”
What was it? What exactly were we dealing with? What was it going to be like to live through a once-in-a-century health crisis?
We didn’t know what we were in for. But even the word — pandemic — had the feel of a late night horror movie.
It’s been a full year since the COVID-19 shutdown, and although vaccines have altered the conversation, we’re still coping with how much our lives have changed, and how enduring those changes will be.
A half-million Americans have perished, including more than 6,400 people in Wisconsin. Many died alone, away from family.
Businesses have shuttered. Jobs have vanished.
COVID-19 has become a way to measure time; holidays, births, weddings, all will be remembered as just before the pandemic, or during it, or postponed because of it.
And like a windshield hit by a pebble, a bit of what holds America together cracked under the pressure of illness, political rancor and fear.
Maybe we’ll return to some sense of normal this summer. Maybe later.
“As my mother would say, with the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbors, that by next Christmas, I think we’ll be in a very different circumstance, God-willing, than we are today,” President Joe Biden said last month during a town hall meeting at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater.
After falling from a peak, the country still averages more than 65,000 COVID-19 cases per day. Worse, new variants from South Africa and Brazil have emerged, threatening to reverse a downward trend in infections. Many strain with impatience. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, his state still wounded by its inability to handle a harsh winter stretch, just announced plans to lift mask requirements and allow businesses to fully reopen. Mississippi did the same, despite warnings they are flirting with yet another surge. Biden called the moves “a big mistake” and indicated they resulted from “Neanderthal thinking.”
Nevertheless, other states have followed suit, with governors saying “personal responsibility” should be enough.
Imagine, we’ve been arguing about face covering for a year.
Furloughs, shortages, empty stands
While we struggle with how to move forward, think back for a moment on the past year.
It changed our habits and our language. We grew accustomed to talking about N-95 masks, Anthony Fauci, rapid antigen tests and herd immunity; we used Zoom meetings, mentally measured six feet in our encounters and bumped elbows instead of shaking hands. We had food and clothes delivered curbside to our cars.
We experienced furloughs. And for some of those who lost their jobs in Wisconsin, there was a double dose of misery with the unemployment system plagued by problems that delayed payments for thousands.
There were shortages of toilet paper and hand sanitizer and yeast, of all things, and a run on canned goods. Patio furniture and backyard fireplaces sold out, as did bicycles.
It was a year for puzzles and reading, arts and crafts, binge-watching Netflix. Six months into the pandemic, Hasbro reported a jump of more than 20% in board game sales.
Golf surged, the Brewers and Packers played in empty stadiums, the Bucks were stuck in a bubble in Florida. Summer festivals disappeared.
In our houses of worship, faith leaders took to livestreaming, presided over private weddings and funerals, and prayed that when their doors fully reopened, all the familiar faces would return.
The ability to adapt, to rebound, so hard in even the best of times, put many to a test.
Listen to Robin Mastera, who poured four years of sweat and money into her restaurant, The Farmer’s Wife, in West Allis.
But then the virus hit, business collapsed and Mastera shut down the restaurant May 30. With the closure went 22 jobs.
“It was heartbreaking to give up my dream and put our family through a few changes and to see other people suffer so badly,” she said.
Mastera thought long and hard about what to do next. Perhaps she’d open a food truck.
But then, out of nowhere, came an offer to run the food and beverage operation at a local golf club.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said.
Alternately energized and exhausted
We’ve wrapped a decade of profound, society-altering change into 365 days, even as some of us — OK, a lot of us — have lost track of whether this is Monday or Tuesday or the weekend.
And similar to the collision of political and social forces that shook the late 1960s, the pandemic has been part of a staggering series of events that at times was overwhelming, from a frenetic presidential campaign to a reckoning on race and policing.
It has left many of us alternately energized and exhausted. And if anyone tells you with any certainty what changes will stick, and what won’t, they’re probably just guessing.
But here are a few things worth considering.
Some children have missed a year of in-person classes at school and that’s not good — for the kids, their stressed parents, or the future of a country that is trying to provide equal educational opportunities for the next generation. Virtual learning does keep teachers and staff safer, but it took some districts weeks or even months to make that pivot successfully. The hope now is that even those districts that remained allvirtual can open safely in the coming weeks.
Some remote workers are perfectly fine and productive, handling tasks at their kitchen tables or in their spare bedrooms or home offices. Others — especially young people alone in apartments — miss the camaraderie and energy of being in an office, surrounded by co-workers. The future of the workplace is totally up for grabs, a dynamic that is going to affect everything from the value of commercial real estate to the design of new homes.
The pandemic didn’t break our politics. But it sure showed just broken and at times useless our politics had become.
Nationally, political calculation seemed to trump consistent messaging. Science continued to fight for its place at the table, with accepted knowledge often slighted because it was uncomfortable or unpopular.
To stem the economic collapse triggered by the virus and lockdowns, tranches of money have gone out through bipartisan bills in Congress. But there continue to be political brawls over what’s needed next, and whether throwing an additional $1.9 trillion into the fray will work.
At home, the state’s response to the pandemic has been one long political battle between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on one side, issuing a series of emergency health orders, and Republicans who control the Legislature on the other pushing back. For most of the year, the two sides didn’t even talk to each other.
Now, with the Legislature back in session, Republicans refuse to mandate standard precautions in the Capitol, saying they infringe on basic rights. Democrats say that’s unsafe, and push people concerned about their health out of the democratic process.
Waukesha County Executive Paul Farrow has a unique perspective on the pandemic, as both a patient and political figure.
“For people to say the virus isn’t real, I’ll take exception to that because I’ve seen firsthand what it does,” he said.
In October, Farrow tested positive for COVID-19. His temperature spiked twice to 105 degrees and after his fever broke he was extremely fatigued for a week.
On the governing side, Farrow, a Republican, put together a task force from across the county’s agencies and “they kept learning” as the pandemic unfolded. In July, he said the governor’s mandate on wearing masks went “too far,” but he encouraged people to use face coverings.
The aim then was to keep the public safe and help make sure schools and businesses were able to reopen. Now, there is a premium on delivering vaccines into the arms of the residents. In Waukesha County, the number of people fully vaccinated will soon surpass the total number of people who tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, Farrow said.
“I think you’ll see a sense of normal, hopefully by Memorial Day,” he said.
If that’s true, it’s in part because while the politicians tangle, our society is underpinned by more important, indispensable people — doctors, nurses, truck drivers, postal workers and grocery store employees. Without them and so many others remaining on the job through the pandemic, there is no telling how much worse things could have been.
“Heroes Work Here,” has become common signage. It’s accurate.
An urban-rural divide
A lot of how we reacted or experienced the last year depended on where we lived.
Urban areas were hit first and hit hardest, especially among AfricanA-merican and Latino communities.
And while precautions became second nature in big cities, they often were ignored in rural areas. That didn’t mean COVID-19 didn’t hit everywhere in the state — it did.
Pepin County in rural western Wisconsin didn’t get its first confirmed case of COVID-19 until mid-May. Since then, the county has had more than 800 cases, including seven deaths. But the county has made great strides as well, already vaccinating more than 60% of those ages 65 and older.
Heidi Stewart, the Pepin County health officer, said that on a professional level, “this year was by far the most demanding and at times I would say overwhelming. But it has been rewarding as well.”
This is what will stick with Stewart for a long time: the look of relief in the eyes of those who received their second doses of vaccines.
But so too will some memories of the divided reaction to the pandemic, family members and friends split on the severity of the virus.
“There are some that take it very very seriously, double mask, gloves, haven’t left their home,” Stewart said. “There are others that go about their business without any caution. I don’t know if our county is that much different than other places. Over the last month or two, people are just really wanting to try to return to normal.”
For so many, returning to normal will never really happen. They lost too much.
Milwaukee’s first victim of COVID-19 was Lawrence Riley, 66, a retired firefighter, who died March 19.
Riley’s wife and their six children cherish his memory even as they continue to deal with loss.
“There’s never a day that goes by that I don’t think about my dad and how he died,” said one of his sons, Elvaughn Riley. “I saw firsthand what COVID-19 can do and how it can take the life of someone you love.”
“One day, he was fine and in the span of four days he lost his life,” he added. “We never had closure. Our father was suddenly taken away from us. For me it hasn’t changed over the year. I still feel it. All the emotions are still the same. I’ve learned how to deal with him being gone.
“But he’s still gone.”