The times, they are a-changin'

Reading: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison 

Listening to: "Rise Up" by Andra Day

Outside: rain 

Just as we begin to notice the smell of bleach is making us salivate like Pavlovian dogs, and as we notice the sun stays up higher in the sky each evening, lighting our way longer as we instinctively side-step strangers and loved ones alike, the light comes closer to us at the end of this long, unbelievable, horrible tunnel. 

A week from tomorrow, the UK looks forward to a huge step forward on the roadmap out of this hell. May 17th will be an important day for millions. We will be able to join another household indoors. We will be able to dine inside restaurants, walking past those soggy picnic tables we, only recently and briefly, huddled at, swaddled in coats and scarves, with our pints and our wine glasses. Inhaling our first hesitant nuances of Normalcy. Local Test & Trace teams will be busier than ever, keeping track of all of us as we travel further, or remain close, as we emerge out of our houses to get those haircuts we have so desperately needed and only a few weeks ago were able to get again; as the ink in the tattoo artist's needle warms up again. 

Our masks are now a part of our wardrobe; we hold our breath now, in suspension, to see when we can take them off. And we are part of the pandemic, holding our arms out for the vaccine, for the first and the second. We take selfies in our cars or outdoors or in the pharmacy or community-centres-turned-vaccination-stations, our t-shirt proclaiming it, our little paper card printed for the world to see, we are changing.

My household changes, too. Lena gets her very first visit from the tooth fairy, and the very next day, her little brother Indiana turns six months old. 

She introduces him to solid food gently and confidently, as if in a previous life she has done this before. Or as if her ancestors, my mom, or her great granny, or a ghost from even further back, is there, guiding her hand. Maybe Tabitha (long "i") Ross Milner is there, maybe she is the starched-and-corseted twenty-year-old she used to be, experienced after one baby and with ten still to go - maybe she gave Lena silent pointers, because spoon-feeding a baby was the same in 1899 as it is in 2021. 

Today I huffed and puffed my way through the beginning of my fifth month jogging, and, for the first time in a long time, indoors. Rain keeps me inside. My poor treadmill was dead, and Dave made it live again. My poor heart was dead, after being inside these four walls for so long. Today I stepped on the treadmill for the first time since October 2019, back before Everything Turned Upside Down. Today, toggling the incline switch as much from muscle memory as from my need for an uphill challenge, I looked around my dining room. My living room. The dining table from Grandad George that didn't used to be there, the table-and-temporary-school-desk-for-Lena. The baby toys piled up in the re-purposed Moses Basket, so big has my baby got. The bib curled up on the arm of the couch, Dave rocking a quiet bundle on his knee. I sweated amidst this brand-new treadmill tableaux. The old music, the Pre-Pandemic music, the before-we-planned-another-baby music, thumped and thudded in my ears for the first time in almost two years, the rhythm matching my feet, matching my heart, and I sweated and marvelled at the differences. The differences. The pandemic, the baby, our lives completely rearranged. 

I've been told to embrace change. 

Through the inertia, the frustration, the hesitation, the fear. Through the days when I think, We will never see Normal again. When I think, We will hide behind masks forever. We will never hug our friends again. We will watch movies made before 2020 and think - That's how things Used To Be. (Tearing up at the senseless ease of it all, imagining what we'll say to our kids and grandkids, speaking in soft tones of our tender lives, how we used to let the kids steer the shopping carts in Wal-mart. How they had little kiddie shopping carts, and the bright coin-operated horsie ride outside the store wasn't taped off. How clothing stores didn't have to count the customers, and you didn't have to line up for blocks to buy a bra. How toy machines clanked and jangled in every pub. How the mall Santa was there every Christmas, listening with bated breath to your every little want.)

I wonder what the ghosts of our former selves think, our selves who saw us through those first awkward days at school, the rising tide of our emotions as we grew and fell and learned, the selves who made sure we got through - a lost puppy, a divorce, a death. Did we get through? Did we change? 

Sure as hell we did. 

Some things can only be carried. 

The isolated.

The rainbows on every window.

The applause on summer evenings to say Thank You.

The cracked hands.

The children who have no-one to play with.

The distance between us.

The visits cancelled.

The celebrations postponed.

The lost.

The alone.

Let us all help each other carry this. 

Let's watch the world together.

We'll watch the sun rise again. 

Warming our faces again. 

Photo taken at beginning of the UK's first Lockdown, over a year ago. 
Our hearts, love and gratitude are still there.

Let's see where this road takes us.

Happy Saturday, everyone.