Will Things Ever Be the Same?

chickadee--not "ours," though

Yesterday after supper we had a "front-porch visit" with our son and his family, who had driven up from their home in Green, Ohio. We didn't go outside, even though they were masked: Both Joyce and I are, for one reason or another, in the "vulnerable" category. To communicate, we used my iPhone on speaker.

Delighting everyone was this: They had given us a gift not long ago--a wee birdhouse (the kind you can hang on a wall), and Joyce had hung it on the outside wall by our front door. In the past couple of days, a chickadee has declared it his space, though. When he hears the front door open, he will dart out of there with all the alacrity of .... well, of me, say, if I were to see Bigfoot at the front door. (I'd be out the back, of course.)

Our human visitors were out on the porch for quite a while as we caught up on all that they're doing (for example, the two boys, 10 and 15, are both engaged in remote, online learning from their schools and seem to be very self-disciplined about doing their work--just as I would (not) have been at their age).

Meanwhile, the chickadee was annoyed and from its perch--which moved from limb to limb on nearby trees--issued dire (!) warnings about his presence--loud chirps that seemed somehow inconsistent with his diminutive presence.

I will now translate those chirps for you: That's my space! When are you going to leave? When are things going to return to normal?

On that score, the chickadee and most of the rest of us compose a chorus, one that sings the same verse over and over and over again, our voices growing ever more raspy as we do so.

I'm afraid I believe that the general insouciance of my life will never return, not in my ever-shortening lifetime. COVID-19 seems determined to linger on the porch so long that even an irate chickadee will give up and wing off in search of a more promising abode.

We're learning that the virus has mutated somewhat (no surprise: all creatures, great and small, do that) and may have become even more threatening to younger people--and even to those who've already recovered from COVID-19(a) and now must confront (b).

Social distancing, it seems, will have to continue for quite a while--months? years? forever?

And masks? Already highly controversial (among some--not me), masks seem to have a doubtful future. As you no doubt know, if you wear a mask, you are principally protecting others whom you encounter. If they are wearing masks, then the protection flows both ways; if they are not, the (potential) virus flows one way: toward you. In other words, not wearing a mask is tantamount to saying: I don't care if I infect you.

But some seem to think that requiring masks is somehow dictatorial--un-American--like, you know, speed limits in cars, driving in the right, not the left, lane, stoplights, and on and on and on. One person has already died--murdered--because he was enforcing a face-mask rule at a store. Shot dead by an annoyed, mask-less, freedom-loving customer denied access to the store. (Would the Founding Fathers be proud!)

Some stores have adjusted their face-mask rule because of angry, even violent encounters that employees have had to deal with.

Anyway ... that's just one way our world has changed in the past couple of months. There are, as you know, so many others.

In fact, there have been so many that the thought of one day (soon? ever?) returning to my previous, careless routines seems more and more remote. Walking over to the coffee shop, sitting and talking with friends, going out to the health club to exercise on machines others have used, to chat in the locker room, etc.? Going to movies, plays? Driving out to a mall to walk around and look and sit with a cup of coffee?

Greeting family members with hugs instead of iPhone-chats with a door between us while an annoyed chickadee screams about the loss of his Normal. His Freedom.