What together used to feel like

I was having lunch with a friend last week and we were talking about the way the world feels right now.

"Things are starting to look normal, like, there aren't as many masks in public, and people are starting to convene in groups again ... but ..." she searched for the words, "things are still feeling kinda weird."

I agreed with her. I struggled to describe my own feelings, to put it in a way that she could understand. Everything is starting to look normal, like The Before Times, but it doesn't feel the same, and this juxtaposition is jarring.

"Before the pandemic began," I said, “It felt like we were all in this web, this interconnected web. It was almost something you could feel in your body, little webs stretching out to meet other little webs. When the pandemic started, we cut the web into pieces as we all separated from each other into our little pods. And now we haven't reconnected. Even when we are together -- in a public space, like in a grocery store, or a park --- it doesn't really feel together. It doesn't feel like what together used to feel like."

I was relieved when she nodded in agreement. It wasn't just me feeling these things. Maybe you're feeling them too. I thought about the power of language, the way we have used it to help muddle through the various stages of these past two years. First there was The Before Times. Now there is The New Normal. We languished. We sent memes. Through all of it, we tried to make sense of these shifting times by using our words.

During lunch, when my friend and I could describe these feelings, these observations, suddenly I could sense we both felt a little bit better. Language shapes our reality. It also helps us ground ourselves in reality, to situate ourselves in the world. When she understood what I was trying to say, suddenly there was connection where there hadn't been before.

I thought about this lunch conversation earlier this week when I taught my first in-person class in over two years. We were all wearing masks but we were in the same room. We were all ready to share our words, to connect with language. The excitement was palpable.

We communicate with so much more than language, too. We communicate with a smile. With a gesture, with a color of lipstick, with a style of facial hair, with our teeth, with our bodies.

In the absence of hugs, in the absence of smiles, with masks over our face, we still had language. We still had a way to connect. It might be too early to tell, but maybe we are in the process of stitching that web back together.

We have sat with this tension for over two years now: we have never felt more disconnected, and yet we are aware more than ever that we are inexorably connected.

Creative writing classes are places where we can remember that, grieve it and celebrate it.