Slowly, slowly, I feel myself returning the world. Not physically. Not yet. The post-pandemic world is not yet upon us. But in my mind, and maybe, just maybe, there are tiny green tendrils of hope sprouting underground in my heart.
For the first time in years I can listen to and watch the news without tenseness humming through my body. Every day is not littered with endless doomsday updates from the world. When I tune in to catch up, I don’t become breathless, simultaneously enraged and hopeless. More and more I find myself beginning again to think of what is possible. I’m watching as our parents, friends and families begin to get vaccinated. Nothing will change for a long while, but at least that is something; and something big.
What will it be like, this new post-pandemic world? I see pictures of the parades that were held “after” the Spanish flu and I now see why people were so ready to celebrate. It was a disaster though, causing a new outbreak and making thousands of people sick. Will we have giant “hugging parties” like that? It sounds glorious! A gathering of friends and family where we can all laugh and jump and hug each others’ necks with tears and laughter and a whole range of human emotion we have necessarily shelved for so long! And then there are the new virus strains. And I know that a hugging party will not be the safest way. Even it were possible, would we feel safe? Or will the anxieties created during isolation and quarantines allow us to participate in something so heady and interactive?
No. I suspect hugging parties will not be the way. I think it will be more like filling a bathtub. A little at time, we will trickle into public spaces, encountering one another slowly and with great heart, hand sanitizer still at the ready. Hugs will be exchanged, faces exaggerately facing apart, pulling back to a safe distance to continue conversing, happy to see one another, but still in need of distancing for our own emotional comfort. Life will resume as it left, like the tides, easing in to the beach. Just as we slowly closed down over hours and days and weeks, life will again bloom in neighborhoods, work places, churches, libraries, restaurants, senior communities and among friends.
Oh friends how I have missed you! Game nights, picnics, pitch-ins, brunches, girls nights, manicures and oh my…pedicures! I miss coffee shop brainstorming with colleagues, happy hour diet cherry coke trips to Steak n’ Shake for our team. I have missed my clients in our adult day program oh so much too. I can’t wait to safely visit them in their homes or senior living communities. Our adult day program business had to close, but my heart did not. I can’t wait to go visit our folks. Of all those deprived and isolated during this time, it has been the hardest on them, our seniors living in facilities.
I picture our friends who are grandparents finally getting to see the tiny toddlers that have grown wildly in our time apart. Siblings, cousins and extended families will be able to gather again. Doesn’t Christmas in July (or August or February or at all) sound wonderful?
Of course all of this is still beyond reach. In the mean time, with a national pandemic response now in place, a vaccine being distributed around the country and a hope (we hope) of change to come, I invite you to take a few minutes to daydream of a post-pandemic life with me. Who do you miss? Where will you go?
I hope that wherever and to whomever your post-pandemic heart takes you, that we all find the joy we have missed.
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