Some people thrived this past year during the pandemic, barely noticing the lock-downs, shut-downs, and shout-downs between the maskers and anti-maskers. Others were just “doing time” in their own home, a house arrest. And then there were the social butterflies forced to live less colorful more grey lives, pinned by a pandemic.
I spent this Covid year largely at my computer in my favorite outfit: yoga pants and a T-shirt.
Dressing up is now something from my distant past. I’m also less talkative. I grunt more. Movie star Sylvester Stallone said he preferred grunting as opposed to speaking in his portrayal of Rambo, an ex-military vigilante. Stallone said the less dialogue the better—and that much can be communicated through grunts. So, I defer to Rambo’s wisdom.
Now though, with increasing Covid vaccinations and infection rates dropping precipitously, life as we once knew it may be returning. We’ll soon be able to eat at restaurants and see grandma face-to-face again. I have a friend who lives in British Columbia but her elderly mother is in a nursing home just across the border in the United States. It’s been a year since she’s seen her mom. First the nursing home said no visitors, and then the Canadian border closed. I’ve wondered, after Covid will my friend and her mother have a happy reunion? Or will her eighty-eight year-old mother have grown too frail for a hug?
For some of us, a year is a long time.
Covid has changed us in many ways, including how we live and work. It also may have altered the way we relate to each other. I took a walk with a neighbor this morning who told me that she suddenly felt like she’d become an introvert.
“I don’t know,” she said, “I just don’t have a longing to join in with my old groups anymore. I’m a little lonely, but I don’t have the energy for socializing.”
Our social and emotional lives can experience Covid damage. Sciencemag.org (online, 3/16/2020) says chronic social isolation increases mortality by as much as 29%. Apparently, just being social makes a big difference on our stress levels. The institutions and activities that bind us, churches, community organizations, and sporting events for example, bring us both pleasure and comfort. Such activities connect us. I haven’t sat next to someone in a movie theater or at my granddaughter’s piano concert in over a year. Superficially, I haven’t missed the togetherness, but Harvard sociologist Mario Small says being with others can give us a reassuring sense, “… that (we’re all part of) something larger…” 
Now thinking ahead to post-pandemic, I’m wondering if we can pick up where we left off relationship-wise. Last March I sat at a dinner table with my book club friends talking and laughing through the night.
Zoom meetings have replaced those relaxed, fun times, but tech can only go so far in giving us a sense of community.
I politely declined when my sister-in-law recently asked me to Zoom together with other family members. I’m all zoomed out. You can’t read body language on Zoom, and that affects the flow of conversation. Either you’re talking over someone else—or you sit there silent, smiling dumbly into the computer screen.
A good analogy for our year-long Covid withdrawal is the story of Sleeping Beauty. When we wake up will all our castles be overgrown with vines, as neglected as our social lives?
My best hope is to smoothly transition back into former relationships.
The military has a protocol for service members returning home after an extended deployment. They advise them to take it slow “reintegrating” with family and friends. Military.com (online) says, “That first kiss back can be an amazing one, but it can also be awkward (nine months or a year of no kissing can do that).”
So, to all my affectionate family and friends that I haven’t seen in a year, I’m as ready as you are to get back together. But just so you know, a simple grunt “hello” is the only greeting I need.
Blog post at http://www.dianahooley.net. Image credit: Rambo, and Friends,
For centuries religious aesthetics retreated into monasteries to meditate and refresh their spirit. As Easter approaches, I’m remembering the story of Christ, how he retreated into the garden of Gethsemane for just such a purpose.