‘New normal’ makes us weary, but we’re all in it together
We’re all starting to realize that we might not get out of this COVID19 pandemic until next year, aren’t we? This new reality feels like a storm cloud slowly crawling over the hills toward our safe little village. Filling a few sandbags and closing a few shutters isn’t going to cut it, fellow townspeople. The village is going to get hit and get hit for a while.
And so, as rules loosen and tighten and loosen, and threaten to tighten again, we’re all starting to make up our own parameters for surviving the pandemic. Each of us must decide what we’re comfortable attempting, be it a visit with a friend or dropping a kid off at camp. Restaurants in some Bay Area counties are serving customers indoors. Certain day cares are open while others, like ours, remain shuttered. Some grocery stores “suggest” masks, yet others require them. It feels like we’re at the point where California is basically saying, “This isn’t over by a long shot, but use your best common sense.”
Generally speaking, I’m not sure collective common sense is humanity’s strong suit.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about noticing an uptick in neighbors who act like hall monitors. There are those among us who are using shelterinplace rules as a thrillingly justified reason to feel superior to others. And in some cases, it’s warranted, like judging the barrage of Marina District day drinkers who happily crowd along Chestnut Street. Those people are wrong, the rest of us are right. Other folks, like the NextDoor tyrants who assume the very worst about each one of us on an afternoon walk, need to take a deep, masked breath.
In 1820, the Nantucket, Mass., whaleship Essex was destroyed by a Pacific Ocean sperm whale, leaving the ship’s crew to languish in three separate lifeboats for months until the few that barely survived were rescued. I’ve read “In the Heart of the Sea,” Nathaniel Philbrick’s account of the tragedy that inspired “MobyDick,” a dozen times. In Philbrick’s book, there’s a lot of drifting around the Pacific Ocean while infighting and wondering what’s going to happen next. Aside from our access to fresh water and not having to eat raw turtles, that’s similar to how I feel now.
My son, Leo, and I were on an evening stroll last week. We’d stopped to look at some rocks when in the distance, I noticed a man and his four unleashed dogs coming toward us. One of the pups ran ahead and sniffed my shoe. I looked down and said, “Well, hello there.”
At first, I thought the man was screaming at his dog. But no. He was screaming at me. “Do. Not. Touch. My. Dog!” He screamed it repeatedly from 50 yards away. I had no intention of touching his dog, by the way. His dog was the one touching me. The man and the rest of his freewheeling pets got closer and continued to yell. I think he called me an idiot at one point, just for daring to exist while his unleashed dogs ran free. The screaming was all in the name of social distancing, he yelled. Unlike me, he knows how the rules work.
Despite a few lax COVID19 laws, this isn’t getting any easier. The isolation and the unknown are making even the best among us crack sometimes. Many are dealing with layers of invisible loss that somehow suddenly manifest into screams at strangers on hiking trails. I get it. There are happy surprises, too.
Our neighbor hired a team to trim his large tree. The sound of the wood chipper was calling to little Leo, who leaned his whole body against the front door until I took him outside to watch. We sat on our porch and marveled as big branches crashed to the ground, and the masked men tossed them into a mesmerizing machine. When the tree had been trimmed, Leo offered a very sincere round of applause. One of the workers delighted, “I never got that before!”
A month ago, sheltering in place felt lonely, frustrating and scary, but it felt temporary. As the phrase “new normal” becomes less annoying and more accurate, that loneliness, frustration and fear is settling in to stay. This too shall pass, but it’ll only pass when a few thousand geniuses in lab coats discover a cure. Until then, we must find ways to manage together in spite of our weariness. After all, the lifeboat with the most survivors is usually the lifeboat with the fewest jerks.
The lifeboat with the most survivors is usually the lifeboat with the fewest jerks.