Reaching For Normal

A sense of guilt washes over me. I’m sitting in an outdoor dining area of a restaurant with my friends. It is January 7, 2021 and the new strain of COVID just arrived here in New York City.  Yet here I was celebrating my friend Gabriel’s 21^st birthday.

I reason with myself and a voice in my head insists, “But I have not seen them in months! This dining area is safe because it has partitions! My friends and I have been following quarantine rules for months.” None of it helps. The waiter serves me tea and I feel like a criminal when I take my mask off to drink it.

My friends and I only take our masks off to eat and drink.  Our faces remain covered all day. We leave the restaurant and take a train downtown. At least we can find a seat in the subway.

We reach Union Square. It has changed so much since the last time I was here. There is less traffic; I can hear my friends without waiting for the cars to stop honking. There are even fewer people. All three of us can walk together on the sidewalk and walk slowly. Even with open shops and a few groups of people at the park, the masks and the sanitizers at every shop remind me that we have not returned to normal. There might not be a normal waiting for us at the end of this pandemic.

This is where I realize how much I miss this city and how much of it is gone, vanished into thin air. The never-ending stream of people moving from block to block. The need to navigate around crowds because I too had somewhere to be, and the constant traffic that reminded us that the city was alive, and the world kept turning. Until it didn’t.

Months have passed and I have adjusted to working and studying from home. But the absence of the city still hits me. I am almost nostalgic for the times I was annoyed at slow walkers, crowded trains, and people who stood at the right side of the escalators in the subway.

We walk to an art store and an employee offers us hand sanitizers at the door. The shop, thankfully, has a few customers. Everyone keeps to themselves, browsing the aisles and leaving ample space for others. My friends and I fill a basket with pencils, sketchbooks, brushes, and I wonder, “What will I do if this shop closes too? When all of this is over, how far will I have to travel just to buy some paint? Will Amazon be my new art shop?” The art store nearest to me closed last summer. We pay for our supplies and leave for the subway.  When my train arrives, ready to take me home, I hug my friends goodbye.

On the ride home, I feel afraid again.  It feels like March 2020 all over. After a few months of lockdown, I had settled into a routine. I told myself, “Work from home, follow safety guidelines, and be patient. Soon a vaccine will be made, and slowly but surely life will return to normal.”

But now, the new strain has thrown me out of this loop. How could I forget that viruses mutate and that some people still aren’t wearing masks? This pandemic is going to last longer than I thought it would.