Coronavirus restrictions remind us to live with, and sometimes love, changes
Much of my life has been about adapting to change — sometimes over time, sometimes precipitously. Occasionally, the adjustments were of my own making, but often the changes that affected me were launched by someone or something else.
Fortunately, a lot of us learn early how to roll with the punches. It’s that or scream a lot, which isn’t socially acceptable, especially in public.
Each person has his or her own tolerance level for confinement, I guess.
Mine’s a lot higher than I thought it would be.
My rather unconventional background has served me well, I think, making it easier to accept the restrictions of COVID-19 shelter-at-home regulations.
Even mask wearing. And washing our hands the right way, so many times a day, as we should have been doing for years.
During our coronavirus-related sequestering, we’ve also learned that there are many things we used to buy that we really didn’t need, and a lot of things we used to do that could be delayed or were unnecessary.
Sure, I miss the opportunities to mingle and browse, travel to different locations and experience new adventures. To share time out with friends and even some strangers. To experience a live play, concert or other performance. To enjoy exotic meals, and have someone else do the dishes, yay!
But still, I can deal with change and, for now, live without:
▪ The specialty ingredient that required a trip to an out-of-the-way store? Nah. Fix something else for dinner.
▪ A purchase that would normally require trying something on in person, or giving it the “sit test?” I’d rather wait.
▪ A night out? Dinner out? Better to stay home and avoid the crowds.
▪ A trip? Not in the cards. Read my lips: “No unnecessary travel.”
▪ Searching for something that’s inexplicably out of stock? Sure, there were (and still can be) empty shelves where the toilet paper, paper towels or hand sanitizer usually was displayed. There were (and still are) shortages of flour because so many people suddenly discovered the joy of filling vacant hours with baking and the frustrations and thrills of having, babying and using their own sourdough starters. But shortages of pickle relish? Kidney beans? Really?
So, we adapt. And change.
Of course, some people are more set in their ways.
My grandfather, for instance. Goodness, he’d have had a terrible time today!
Gramp lived through the 1918 pandemic, but as a much younger, and I would assume a much more flexible, person. As an adult, he would have railed and chafed at the changes today.
His life was dictated by the clock, the calendar and the weather: Breakfast at 7 a.m., on the train by 8, at work at his executive Union Carbide job in the city by 9, lunch at noon, train ride home to a cocktail and dinner at 7 p.m.. On the nose. Or there was hell to pay.
There was no train on weekends, but he still observed the same mealtimes, often with golf or gardening in his greenhouse in the middle.
Not my lifestyle, then or now.
As a junior in high school, while my gadabout mom and stepfather continued their wanderlusty ways, I lived with my grandparents for eight months.
I learned a whole lot then about having an immutable schedule. I also learned it was so not for me.
Good thing, too.
My mom had divorced my dad when I was 5. When I was 13, we left our New York home for a vacation on which she met a chef in Wyoming … and married him 10 days later!
After that, we lived in seven states in three years and I attended 13 different high schools. We didn’t go back to New York until I was dropped off at my grandparents’ house for most of my junior year.
After my subsequent life was filled with career, marriage, mothering and other changes, some of them abrupt.
Husband Richard’s stroke in 2013 was a huge life changer. Way before the coronavirus pandemic, we were mostly homebodies.
I’ve worked remotely for more than a decade, so I already had that process down pat.
So, the shelter-at-home order was just another reason to mostly do and not do what we’d already been doing or not doing.
But I still embrace change, shaking things up a bit whenever I can, as long as those changes are good ones.
Or in recent situations, potentially life-saving ones.
After all, by now it’s second nature for those of us in a vehicle to wear a seat belt to be safer, even though it’s uncomfortable.
A mask? Uncomfortable and awkward? Somewhat. Inconvenient? Sure. Can it make communicating a little more difficult? Yes.
But experts now say that wearing a mask could help save your life or mine, so it’s a no-brainer.
I can deal with it.
