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Sometimes a diamond
Our new normal is hard to explain to anyone who asks, “What do you do to keep busy, these days? Do you two have some kind of routine? What about food? Are you eating more or less? What about exercise? How’s that going?” But I suppose everyone’s “new normal” is quirky, and, to say the least, different from the “old normal”. Years and years ago, LOML and I used to be motivated to tidy, and clean, the house because, as our moms used to say, “You never know when someone will drop by.” But now we know the likelihood of someone dropping by is sitting at negative ten. People, like my mom and dad and LOML’s mom and step-dad, just dropped by, back in the day. We can remember looking out the front window of our Toronto apartment and one of us shrieking, “There’s your mom. The place is a mess.” Instantly, we’d whip through the apartment, hiding laundry behind closet doors, clearing the counters, fluffing the throw pillows, sweeping the newspapers off the coffee table and shoving the garbage down the hallway chute. Now, we’re fairly certain a casual visit is not going to happen anytime soon. And, before we knew it, the place began to look a little bit like a college dorm—or worse, our first apartment on a Saturday morning. We weren’t slobs, but I worked fulltime and went to school at night and LOML went to school full-time and worked at night. Sometimes things didn’t happen in a timely fashion. Sometimes things piled up, here and there. Sometimes clean laundry was a challenge. Sometimes we were grateful for three sets of china and flatware.
And here we are. LOML and I are trying to get excited about dusting, scrubbing and vacuuming. We’re trying to see the good in washing dishes at least once a day. Neither of us has a full-time job or a class to attend. It should be easier, right? It doesn’t seem to be. And, on top of this, we wonder if we’ll ever get to those little fixes we discussed before the 2020 in-the-slammer-hammer fell. When we could be washing the windows or painting the bathrooms, or putting the trim up in the kitchen, we’re watching YouTube videos. LOML gravitates toward the music videos. I’m partial to watching videos of people doing stupid stuff. When we aren’t watching videos we Skype with our family, tearfully hoping our youngest grandson doesn’t forget who we are. We read—he does, more than I. We could be a study in nature versus nurture, but I don’t think anyone is going to get close enough to us to take notes. I can vaguely remember LOML vacuuming about two weeks ago—maybe it was yesterday— but it happened because we’d tracked leaves and mud in on our treks back-and-forth to the hot tub. And I did clean the bathrooms, not too long ago. It could have been the day of the Great Vacuuming because I felt like I should be doing something while LOML hoovered. Maybe it was the day LOML and I chatted about one of us catching the virus, which could mean an EMT might have to come into the house. I think that was the day we blitzed the place with the vacuum, the Windex, spray bottles of Mr. Clean, the bleach and the Pledge. And then?
Well, and then we figured surface tidy/cleanish was probably close enough. If any EMTs were going to burst into our house there would be a flurry of visibility-impairing face masks and protective shields, along with gowns and gloves. Most likely no one would notice a bit of dust on the stairs or those delicately beautiful, lacy cobwebs draped in the space between the curtain rod and the paintings in the living room. Under those circumstances, would an EMT notice the finely ground popcorn, chips and the toast crumbs on and around the couch, particularly where I perch? An eagle-eye might spot the backlog of coffee cups and water glasses, again, on my side of the living room, but I hope their focus would be elsewhere. Let’s hope a Martha Stewart type doesn’t show up to intubate and then drag a gloved finger across the screen of the television while “tuttutting”. It could happen, right.
My new normal seems to be rambling around the house mumbling “Sometimes a diamond. Sometimes a stone.” As I glance around our cleanish but not too tidy isolation unit, I wonder if this new normal of our life is the priceless gem we always thought it was, or a rocky road in need of attention.
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