A Ticket to Normal
I’M FINDING A GREAT DEAL OF COMFORT in continuity these days.
On Saturday evening my husband and I cooked dinner together. Done with the day’s chores and another week’s routine, we sat, ate, drank wine together, discussed the news and the COVID-19 scene. We washed the dishes and went to our respective desks and chairs for an evening of reading and writing. On Sunday we read the newspapers, talked about travel writing and about our traveling family who live and work in far places. I re-potted a houseplant—a peace lily that needed to stretch its legs. I played countless games of fetch with Sachem, my two-year-old black lab, who needed to stretch his legs. It was an unexceptional, normal sort of weekend. On Monday morning my husband and I left for work and the dog went back to bed.
I confess to moments in my life when I’ve railed against the over-and-over-again-ness of everyday life, when I’ve screamed at the sky for something—anything—to happen, anything but another day of this, the repetitive, treacherously safe, quotidian routine.
But since All This began to happen—since COVID-19 came into our world—and since my everyday life began to change in ways I could never have imagined, I’m finding comfort in that very thing called routine. I look to the wallpaper of my world for reassurance, to those parts of it that seem unchanged, that feel familiar each day, because that wallpaper lends an organizing principle to an increasingly chaotic world.
Last week a friend asked me where I plan to travel when All This is over. I told her that what I most want is a one-way ticket back to normal.
On normal Saturdays my husband and I might go out to dinner or entertain friends, but the restaurants are closed now, and we and our friends are practicing safe social-distancing. On Sundays I take my dog to the beach, where we run with a tennis ball and a lacrosse stick and both come home panting and begging for mercy. But the beaches are cordoned off now, so we play in the backyard. On Monday mornings I groan when the alarm goes off and I have to crawl out from under a sleeping dog, out of a warm bed and into a new working week, but now I’m more grateful than ever to be free to leave the house and drive to a job that I love.
Since All This began, the continuity of unexceptional days makes me feel safe. Waking up and going to sleep, going to work and coming home, cooking dinner and washing dishes, potting plants, playing with the dog, doing research for an ongoing writing assignment. I’m finding comfort in that continuity. It makes me feel normal—as normal as I can hope to feel in a world where the terms of engagement are being continuously and rapidly redefined.
Will I ever again rail against routine, complain about the humdrum, yawn at the over-and-over-again-ness of everyday life? Probably. But in the limbo between Before and After All This, the routine feels like a ticket to Normal.
