Zombielike, we emerge, blinking in Stage 3 light
Scenes from a bar stool on a summer afternoon …
Elderly Lady One describes to Elderly Lady Two her lingering discomfort from being hit by a taxi.
Elderly Lady Two counters that, oh yes, she’s been in constant pain since she was hit by a taxi, too.
Elderly Lady Three — that would be me — resists butting in to recount how I also was hit by a cab! Not recently, but still. Is there some kind of a club for those of us who’ve been struck by taxis?
Elderly Lady Two shows the vodka 25-ouncer she’s just purchased. “It’s all for me. If anybody tries to drink it, I’ll hit them over the head with the bottle.”
Maybe this is pandemic residue of disgruntlement after months coping with severe restrictions in Toronto, which on Friday moved to a liberalizing Stage 3 of reopening. Or maybe I should find a finer quality neighbourhood saloon; indoor barfly conversations seem suddenly an overestimated diversion.
For most of us, I suspect, life didn’t change that much when the clock struck midnight on a long weekend, although obviously publicans and restaurateurs are cheered by the prospect of increased business during the balance of the summer.
We’re still wearing masks, at least those of us who have some regard for keeping our fellow humans safe.
Really, the only remaining debate is over masking for younger children when schools reopen in September. Arguments among doctors on social media are high-pitched. If those in the presumed medical know can be so opposed in opinion, what are poor parents supposed to think as they navigate provincial protocols, even amid a steeply declining infection rate?
Recommencing education may be a crucial cornerstone of rebounding from massive COVID-19 disruption, but Ontario has only half way adopted recommendations unveiled Thursday by Education Minister Steven Lecce, based on a report from the Hospital for Sick Children. This strongly urges smaller classes and physical distancing.
The one-time funding influx doesn’t appear to be there, not sufficiently, for ensuring smaller class sizes, enough teachers, additional space for classes of 15 and an appropriate level of caretaking staff to keep facilities scrubbed clean and constantly sanitized.
As an outsider to this dilemma — I have no skin in the game — it seems to me that reopening schools is more about accommodating parents who must work, for who schools are quasi stand-in child care, than about education.
We’re figuring it out as we move along, right?
As a society, we’ve come so far already in this topsy-turvy world — although not quickly enough to resolve all the terrible mistakes committed in long-term-care homes because there isn’t one good excuse for more than 1,900 deaths. That’s just Ontario. A damning analysis by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, released last week, said long-term-care residents across the country account for 81 per cent of all reported COVID-19 deaths, compared to 42 per cent among 16 other countries examined.
Which doesn’t even begin to address the merciless constraints inflicted on confined residents, many of whom died alone, while families, often their primary caregivers, were forced to stay away.
As a society, this was a dreadful failure, a cruelty borne by our most frail and needy populace.
We should not forgive ourselves for this.
On the back of extreme suffering of others, we now emerge almost entirely from the vestiges of lockdown, albeit with social distancing still in effect for as far as the eye can see.
There are pleasures rediscovered, of course: from liberated playgrounds to indoor dining and clubs — there’s still no dancing, though, and no tablehopping — to increasing the size of gatherings indoors (50) and outdoors (100) to some movie theatres not exactly flinging their doors open — there’s limited seating — but, at least, they’re screening again.
If you’re interested in re-runs or newish foreign films, I took in a popcorn-less “Train to Busan,” a Korean flick about a zombie outbreak, which seemed fitting.
We’re all a bit zombie-esque, pandemic refugees, if — yeahyeah — in this together.
And if I hear that expression one more time, I’m going to bite somebody.
I actually began Phase 3 of reopening with a pedicure — ahhhh! — perhaps stupidly, at the same salon where I believe I contracted COVID-19 back in March. Two weeks flat on my back with raging fever, aching bones, chronic nosebleed — no sense of smell — and sleeping around the clock.
In any event, there’s a weird intimacy to standing outside for a smoke with the esthetician who’s just clipped my talon toenails.
Then there was sit-down sushi, with relish. (Actually, wasabi.)
And we have sports again, a delight that can’t be undervalued. Wall-to-wall pro sports, with NHL playoffs launching on the weekend, NBA tipping off real games, and MLB … uh, never mind.
Too bad the sports correspondents are so crabby.
Toronto over Columbus in four, I’m saying. In August, oh my!
The fates, I trust, will spare us a no-go Stanley Cup parade.