Tag: normality

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A Familiar Space

Don’t look now, but NASA is looking for people who can live away from human contact for an entire year.

Gee, I wonder who could possibly qualify?

OK, yes, they’re looking for potential space crew here – specifically, people who are ready to set up shop in a mock Martian habitat at Johnson Space Center. But once you peel away the specific (and strenuous) science and engineering requirements, the needs sound curiously familiar to anyone who faced down calendar year 2020.

Spending months on end with the same handful of faces? Check.

Working with limited resource availability and sudden unexpected emergencies? Check.

Planning for regular walks outside the home – pardon me, the habitat – and a whole lot of Netflix consumption to fill time after work? Check and Check.

Really, all that’s missing is a Zoom elementary school and regular Amazon deliveries and it’d feel just like home.

I know, it’s a serious study, not reality TV. They’re not just going to grab some Joe Average off the street, no matter how good a simulation of the Red Planet might sound in comparison to delta variants, wildfires and the latest breaking news stories about “The View.” NASA wants some lessons it can build on, and I hope it gets them.

Nonetheless, it’s one heck of a reminder. We really have been living on another planet lately, haven’t we?

We’ve learned more than we ever wanted to know about isolation and its effect on the human psyche, an aspect of human psychology that was once mainly of use to submariners, astronauts and the crew of the USS Minnow.

We’ve had to be as alert as any astronaut about making safety and security a part of the daily routine. We learned how far away six feet really is in the grocery store, how long 20 seconds is at the bathroom sink, and just how many masks one wardrobe can hold.

And yes, we’ve been as tethered to electronic communication as any space traveler dreamed, with just a few differences in content. (“Hulu, we have a problem.”)

But in among it all, there’s one huge difference. (OK, there’s a lot of huge differences, but work with me on this.) There’s one shift in perspective that makes this particular ride one of the most challenging of them all.

Space colonists in training know when their mission ends.

Astronauts know their expected return date.

But in our case? That’s in our own hands. Ours, and our neighbors, and a lot of strangers we’ve never met.

That’s daunting.

It’s a little like those group projects we all endured in school. You can work like crazy to do everything right, but if someone on the team doesn’t take it seriously, it makes it that much harder for everyone else.

That doesn’t mean “give up.” Far from it. It does mean that even in these days of semi-demi-hemi-normality, we have to keep doing the work to make things better and encourage others to do the same. Getting the shots. Staying alert and taking precautions where we need to. Learning from what we’ve gone through and then applying the lessons, as surely as any experimental NASA team.

Because the last thing any of us wants to do is keep cycling through the 2020s hamster wheel.

Pandemics take time to resolve. They always have. And if we keep our eyes on where we’re going and how we get there, we can find our way through.

That would be out of this world.

Even by Johnson Space Center’s standards.

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Good Boy, You Bad Boy

“I know I should have yelled at him, but I couldn’t help it,” Heather said, with a smile that was just moments away from a laugh.

Well, that’s what happens when you get a Mischief Miracle.

The source, of course, was Blake. For all of his nearly 15 years, our beloved English lab has displayed a paradoxical intelligence: dense as a box of rocks on almost everything, but a genius bordering on Einstein when it comes to acquiring food. (Mind you, since his judgment remains in the “rocks” category, not all of the food that Blake grabs is actually edible – the baby wipes that he once consumed have gone down in family lore.)

But lately, Big Blake the Canine Trash Compactor has been slowing down as time and arthritis catch up. When even the promise of food required a second thought, and a third, and maybe even a fourth before rising to pursue the bounty, it was clear the big guy needed some help. Even after a vet visit, some lifestyle changes and some new pain meds, our concern remained as we wondered whether any of it would take hold.

And then, one morning, Blake paused. His face took on the old “I’m gonna go for it” look. Moments later, right in front of Heather, he lunged for a cereal bar … one that was still in its wrapper, for that matter.

The need for discipline has rarely mixed so thoroughly with the urge for joy.

If you’ve been the parent of a sick child, you may know what I’m getting at here. They get listless, you get worried. And then, you get some minor bit of misbehavior and it’s like the clouds have parted. They’re interested in something, motivated to something, doing something, even if it’s a something you’d rather not have them do.

It’s a sign of normal. For better and worse. But even the worse now goes in the “better” column because you’ve seen the True Worse and have no interest in turning back.

And you still hold your breath a bit. Because normal is oh-so-fragile and you don’t want to jinx yourself by celebrating too soon.

Sound familiar?

We’re seeing this on a larger scale, of course. As pandemic conditions recede around the country, all sorts of “normal” behaviors and conversations are starting up again, including arguments that might have once been chased to a lower tier by COVID concerns. (Billionaires in space, anyone?) Not everything that’s come back is welcome, but it’s a sign that things are coming back … maybe.

Because there’s still the breath-holding. The glance over the shoulder. The worry that the Delta variant, or some other monkey wrench, will put us through another cycle of grief and uncertainty. The need to still be careful until we’re sure the gap has been well and truly crossed.

With Blake, we know this is something of a respite. He’s a big dog who’s almost 15 years old and even in the best of worlds, you only get so much time. But we’ll take this respite for as long as we can hold onto it.

With the larger world … well, to some extent, it’s in our hands. Do we want this to be just a respite, or the next step upward? Our actions and choices during this time will lay the foundations for either.

Chew on that for a while. But don’t take too long about it.

After all, Blake the Walking Stomach is on the move. And if you’re not going to chew something, he’ll be glad to do it for you.

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Dr. Jekyll, I Presume?

My theatre life is still in semi-hibernation at the moment.  But I suddenly feel like I’ve been drafted into a production of Jekyll & Hyde.

If you’re not familiar with the 1990 musical, it’s another take on the famous Robert Louis Stevenson story about a well-meaning scientist who unleashes his own dark side with an experiment that works far too well. Several of the songs reflect the same divide: that the people and the world around us can have two different natures, and you can’t always be sure which one you’re seeing.

Now, I haven’t started transforming at night into a brutish ogre of a man who’s deadly with a walking stick … well, not unless there are some really strange Pfizer side effects that I haven’t heard about yet. But as we all start to poke around the edges of this thing called “post-pandemic,” I’m noticing the same sort of split.

My household is immunized. Missy and I are starting to resume our lunch outings again. (Outside, of course.) Heather is emerging from the depths of Chez Rochat to get eyeglasses and do other long-postponed errands. Signs of change are popping up everywhere, from careful and joyful get-togethers to the re-opening of the local movie theater.

And yet.

There’s an uncertainty. Not just about the fragility of this beginning-of-normal … by now, I think we all know that we’re at a tipping point where a bit of action or inaction can make all the difference in how this pandemic is resolved. But it goes beyond that.

We’re getting caught up in our own double vision.

We’ve spent more than a year training to handle a paradox. Like any disaster, we’ve had to look to each other for help and support. But with a pandemic, we are the disaster … and so we’ve also had to look at each other as possible dangers, potential plague vectors that could become deadly with a moment’s carelessness.

From that, an odd dance evolved: the world of being “together apart,” being a neighbor while keeping our distance. The steps have changed as we’ve learned more but the basic figure has remained the same.

But now things are changing. A transition has begun. And we still have our well-honed reflexes, perfect for a 2020 world, that may suddenly be out of step.

We’re entering a world with more faces again – or at least, more places where those faces aren’t sitting in a square, looking for the Unmute button. And for many of us, the reflexes are still telling us “Careful! Danger! What are we doing here?”

The heck of it is, we can’t even say yet that we’re wrong. It looks like Henry Jekyll out there – but are we seeing the right face? Even if we are, could it still shift to Edward Hyde without warning?

We’re re-learning. And it’s not going to be comfortable.

The good news is, we’ve been there before.

In 2013, a September flood hit that split Longmont in two. In 2014, the first significant spring rainfalls began to hit … and I know many of us immediately tensed, looking to the filling creeks, mesmerized by the gushing gutters.

We had to get through those next rainfalls to really see rain again. Just rain. To re-learn that while floods can happen and we need to be prepared, not every storm will be a flood. To be ready for the dangerous and the normal.

I think we can get there again.

It’s OK to be uncertain right now. It’s OK to be cautious. And it will reach a point where it’s OK to exhale. It’ll take time and some careful practice, but we will get there. Not forgetting the lessons we’ve gained, but able to judge when and where they’re needed.

After all, you’ve got to watch out for your own Hyde.