On the new normal
Despite everything, spring has arrived
I can’t figure out what has changed outside this spring. Maybe the sound is different? Birdsong must be louder. The peepers are singing a little bit more boisterously in the vernal pools in the woods.
“I bet you dollars to donuts this isn’t going to work,” says my spouse Janyce standing at the garage door keypad pressing on the numbers. We’ve just walked up our long driveway past our towering spruce tree, returning from a walk together through the neighborhood. Outside, the misty Friday morning has turned to bright sun on this second day of spring, only a week since we started our new normal.
I pause a few feet behind Janyce for a moment to watch a bird in the sky while she tries the numbers again. Is that a bluebird? Janyce flips the keypad cover and throws up her arms while I walk over to the driver’s side of my car to hit the garage door opener clipped to my windshield visor. Her “dollars to donuts” comment is making me chuckle a little under my breath.
“For some reason, it only works on the way down,” she says, sidestepping the wheel barrel I left out all week alongside a broken rake that we backed over by mistake a few days ago. There’s a pile of soggy rain-soaked leaves on the asphalt now starting to dry out a little in the sun.
Nothing much has changed in our suburban neighborhood. Cars still stream down our street all day—although, maybe there might be less of them? Joggers still pass us by on the other side, a safe social distance away from where we are walking. But probably there are less of them, too? Something just feels different. After only a week, Janyce and I are getting used to being hunched over our computers across from each other at the dining table, settling into an easy morning rhythm. March has been unseasonably mild, but we still stuff the wood stove daily so that it will emanate a blanketing, comforting heat. Each morning, I carry out bowls of steaming, stove-cooked oatmeal to the table, and at night we sleep with the dog wrapped around our legs, all three of us huddled together in the center of our king-sized bed.
Yesterday I was taking a break from my computer screen and watching tiny grey and white birds jumping in and out of a bramble of branches when Janyce came rushing into the room from the office at the conclusion of her lengthy conference call.
“Did you see that?” she said. “It looked like two dogs frolicking out there in the woods. But maybe they were coyotes? They were a little bushy.”
“Frolicking?” I said, “I think those must have been coyotes. This is the time when they start mating.”
“I couldn’t really see them clearly,” she said. “But then a deer came running out of the woods a few minutes later and crossed the road. Thankfully she made it to the other side.”
A deer.
Two months ago in late January, I got up to see who was knocking at my front door. “There is a deer on your front lawn,” said one of the two women in jogging suits standing on the front steps, the other woman trying hard not to make eye contact with me. I said nothing and stood in my entryway with my hand on the doorknob.
The first woman began to speak again, “I think it was hit by a car and we didn’t want you to be surprised when you saw it,” she said.
I craned my neck out the door to follow her outstretched arm pointing to the other side of our long driveway where I could see a brownish shape rustling around in the brush and leaves.
“Thanks for letting me know,” I said, and closed the door against the blast of cold air. The two women walked down the driveway to resume their run while I stood at the sink in front of the kitchen window. I watched the deer trying to get up several times only to fall back down again, her chest heaving rapidly, her frightened eyes open wide and her giant ears pricked up on either side of her small head. Eventually she stayed sitting in the brush with her ears relaxed and not moving.
I was back in my livingroom texting Janyce on her train commute home when I heard the shots. There were two of them — two loud pops preceded by a distinctly animal scream. It took me several minutes to register what I was hearing. “Oh my god, that was the deer.” I raced back out to the kitchen window and saw a man in an orange fluorescent vest with the words “animal control” in black block letters spelled out on his back. He was carrying a short stocky gun now hanging by his side.
I had forgotten about this event that happened only a few months earlier. But Janyce reminded me when she slid into the room all excited about the wildlife moving around in our yard and both of us home in the middle of the day to see it. It feels oddly prescient to be remembering it now, as the start of what would fast become a rapid string of shocking events reported on the news and at my workplace almost daily.
I can’t figure out what has changed outside this spring. Maybe the sound is different? Birdsong must be louder. The peepers are singing a little bit more boisterously in the vernal pools in the woods.
“Do you think that maybe the earth is tired?” I said to Janyce as we were walking. “You know, like maybe the planet needs a little time to rest and that the only way to have that happen is to send humanity a deadly virus to keep it occupied.”
“That’s an interesting thought,” said Janyce.
“Oh look, the forsythia bushes are blooming,” I said.
It’s Saturday morning and I wake up with a jolt in the bed. Our landline phone, the one that Janyce keeps in operation for her older parents, is ringing.
“It’s alright Kris,” she says. “I told my mother we’d be up early this morning.”
Instinctively, I reach for my cellphone by the bed. It’s 6:00 am and too early to call my own mother in Florida. A few cars with red headlamps are starting their Saturday morning travel down our busy road, and the wind chimes hanging right outside my window are chiming. Soon the sun will rise and we’ll both be drinking coffee, watching everything come into focus, and getting ready to start our day.
Everything has changed and nothing has changed. Spring is the same as always, beautiful and constant, and waking up all around us. The part that feels different, I think, is that I’m living in the extreme moment now, with my senses even more heightened and my mind more attuned to nature than usual. I guess I’m looking for a sign to tell me that everything is going to be okay and life will continue as it always has.
And it will. For now though, this just may be my new normal.