The World Turned Upside Down: I Venture Out

Easter morning. For two people.

Is it just me? Or are we transitioning into the section of the New Abnormal where it kind of begins to feel like, well, Normal?

On Easter Sunday, for example, it did not feel completely alien to wear a flower-patterned face mask while playing "Christ The Lord Is Risen Today" in a sanctuary containing only eight people. And while I haven't quite managed the proportions of cooking Easter dinner for two (64 dinner rolls may have been excessive) there was a certain relaxation in knowing that if the roasted asparagus was overcooked (which it was) the only other diner was the most non-judgmental of dinner partners.

I have gotten the routines of stay-at-home internalized, and for the first time in my life am enjoying exercise every day. I'm reading the local library's group-read selection, knitting with soft yarn, and watching all the Masterpiece Theater in the world. I've had time to cover and uncover all my about-to-bloom peonies and geraniums and lily-of-the-valleys against the threat of a late freeze and I'm ready to be done with that, if you please, Mother Nature.

Zoom has become my new BFF, and pretty much all the appointments now on my calendar come with a link. In fact, yesterday I taught my very first piano lesson via Zoom, and it went fairly well. It helps that this is the nicest kid in the world and his mother had contacted me to see if I could pick back up the lessons we'd barely gotten started at semester break. I'm pretty sure this was partly through self-preservation: If he actually was practicing an hour each day, which I absolutely believe he was because he's the nicest kid in the world, his mother was probably ready to gouge her ears with knitting needles at one more day of "The Campbells Are Coming." Anyway, it was delightful to see and hear him.

This morning I made my first foray into the outside world in a couple of weeks (Sunday's piano playing at church excepted).

It was weird.

The only thing I can compare it to was when I joined the Peace Corps and first landed in an international airport. I was exhausted and overwhelmed and everything seemed vaguely threatening, even though no one else seemed alarmed. 

It didn't help that this first trip out was a doctor's appointment. a foray  into what is possibly the most germ-laden arena possible. As it turns out, the natural aging processes do hot hit the "pause" button just because the world is in a medical crisis. Some vague symptoms I've had for a couple weeks were diagnosed as high blood pressure so I have a new prescription and appointments for follow-up.

But one observation on my two-hour excursion into the outer world: Women are better than men when it comes to wearing face masks and observing social distancing. In the waiting room were two men (unmasked and seated somewhat close together) and two women (both masked and sitting so far apart six inches more would have put them into separate parking lots). Who knew that common sense and following of pandemic protocol was a Y-chromosome-linked trait? I will let you answer that one for yourself. Of course, this does not apply to Husband, who patiently dons the masks I've made before he goes into the world of humans. He's a great hand-washer, and has learned to Zoom meetings like a champ.

Now I'm back in the safe confines of the House on the Corner again, and all surfaces that went with me on my excursion have been wiped down and sanitized.

All is Normal again and that thought is comforting, if surreal.