A trip to Kentucky to observe Passover with my family.
A trip to Washington, DC to visit other family and to attend a work conference.
A concert at my favorite venue.
The first public reading, in a local bookstore, my writing group was going to have.
The Kentucky Derby itself.
All postponed or canceled.
Here we are, with all this time on our hands, our calendars wiped clean of all the things we were looking forward to, not to be replaced or filled with anything until further notice.
All this time — and no anticipation.
When you plan a vacation, part of the fun is the time spent looking forward to it. What you’ll do, where you’ll eat, what you’ll see, just imagining getting away and not working for however long. Even if you just drive an hour away, you can look forward to some excitement, to creating new memories, seeing familiar faces (or being a stranger in a strange land), the chance to experience a chunk of days in ways differently than you normally would.
Spending all this time physically and socially distant, at home, alone, I can barely distinguish what time is anymore.
What day is it, and does it even matter?
The days and hours are bleeding into each other, each one like the one before, and worse, pretty much like the ones that are going to come after.
I had a conversation with a friend the other night. We recapped how we spent our Saturdays, and how the weekends, in this time of physical isolation, feel so empty and long and sparse.
While some need to adjust to working from home (I already did, so it’s no different for me) there is still the usual cadence of the day: wake up, have coffee, eat, maybe exercise, work, work, work, eat, quit working, deal with dinner, watch TV, go to bed.
For those with kids at home there is of course day care and home schooling, which is all different, but the days are full. There are few if any empty spaces.
Weekends are different. There is nothing but empty space. There are no errands to run. There are no social gatherings to attend, no new restaurants to try, no games or shows to see…everything is at home.
What does a weekend day look like for me?
I work out in some form or another. I take a walk around the neighborhood, I read at least 20 pages from my book, one article from a magazine, one short story from the latest literary magazine I’ve got (shout out to you, American Short Fiction!) I fire off a few texts, I make a phone call or two, I eat. I shower.
If I’m motivated enough, I’ll write a little bit.
By then it’s noon at the latest. The rest of the day?
Nothing but empty space. And so then my friend asked me what I was doing tomorrow, and my only answer was pretty much the exact same thing I had done earlier. At least on Monday I’ll have work. And we started to wonder, do we even look forward to the weekends anymore?
I don’t.
We don’t know how long this will last. We’re starting to settle into the reality of weeks, maybe months.
There are so many things, activities and people that I miss. But I didn’t anticipate how much I’d miss anticipation.
The hardest thing about getting through these long days is having so little to look forward to.
So there will be ways to adapt. I can make appointments with friends to chat or FaceTime. My family has started having Friday night dinners together via Zoom, and it is now the highlight of my week.
If I continue up with my 20 pages a day, I can tell you exactly when I’ll be starting my next book, and I’m anxious to get to it.
I know what workout I’ll do this morning, and it helps me plan and look forward to a different one tomorrow. I’ve downloaded a fitness app (FitOn) that has more kinds of workouts than I can get to. Trying new ones is keeping it fresh.
Since I’m now ordering my groceries online, I am having to be meticulous and thoughtful in planning out my meals. So this gives me an opportunity to try new recipes. There is a Moroccan stew I’m looking forward to making in a few weeks, when I get that particular grocery order delivered.
These are all good things that will sustain me, physically and intellectually.
But it comes up short. There are still so many, too many gaps.
When can I look forward to my next hug? Newly single, when can I look forward to a date? Hell, when can I look forward to spending time with anyone face to face? Wishing for more than that feels greedy.
I think of all the health care workers on the newly defined “front lines” of our society. I think of the delivery drivers bringing me food, packages and mail. I think of the sanitation workers still picking up my garbage (which I seem to have more of lately) and the cashiers and stockers at the grocery stores. What are they looking forward to? What do they anticipate?
When I think of how deeply all of them must yearn for a return to whatever will be normal, I am, admittedly, more at ease with my current low-grade constant malaise.
For them a return to home must still be what is used to be for most of us. A time to escape the world, to seek comfort within the confines of home.
We’re escaping from the world full-time now. Still, I am, if nothing else, not just stuck at home, but safe at home.
That’s something to be grateful for.
The plans that have been taken off my calendar are the things that make life worth living: being with family, observing rituals with loved ones and friends, music, travel, educational and professional growth.
What is left, in what I mentioned above, the cooking, the exercise, is what will get me through the day, safe at home from whatever danger lurks outside. And that is how it will be tomorrow and the day after, for however long.
What’s so jarring about the physical and social distancing is how quickly we went from our normal lives to this one. How fast the transition was from normality to living to survive. That’s what we’re doing, alone in our homes. Surviving, as best we can.
The other things, the concerts, the fancy food, the travel…these are luxuries we’ve taken for granted. We are not the first of the human race to have endured a period when survival wasn’t automatic. We now see how limiting — and how scary — that life is.
As we dare to think about a return to normal, we wonder what will come back, and what won’t. What we miss that is gone, and what we’ll be happy to see no longer around.
But one thing we’ll appreciate is being able to fashion that world together, with each other, in person, no longer isolated. It’s exciting, in a way, to think we might, if things go well, have a chance to redefine what a new normal will be for our societies and communities, for our cities and countries.
And that, I suppose, is the best thing we have right now to look forward to.
Have any feedback? I can be reached at scottmgilman @ gmail.com.
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Previously Published on Medium
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