Not Coming Back

I find myself wistfully watching an Old World blowing away with the cold front that blows the oak trees across my lawn.

I know the arguments, of course:  this is only a temporary situation, we will be up and running before you know it, we can do it, etc.  And at least superficially I would agree that these are likely to happen:  eventually things will reopen, businesses will have people in them, traffic will be on the road.

But it will be different.

Crowded spaces will - at least to me - no longer reflect people out or having a good time but possible vectors of infection.  Spending money will now always - always - have to measured against the very real possibility that more than ever, it may be needed for somewhere else. Our entertainment - shopping, sporting events, restaurants, movies - will now always potentially be at the risk of your life.  Tourism, that life blood of so many economies and communities, will be curtailed at best and far less far reaching - at most, air travel will be the rare treat that it used to be, not the common mode of transport it has become.  We will reflect on the great places we have been or the places we would like to go, knowing in heart of hearts that we will likely not longer get there.

And hanging over all of this will be the specter of another shutdown, out of the blue, that can destroy your economy and your life again. 

This is a significant change to me - as significant as the changes to air travel after 9/11.  We went from happily greeting travelers as they came off the plane to standing at the bottom of escalators or in dingy lobbies waiting for our travelers to arrive - or just meeting them quickly on the side of the arrival drop off for a quick hug and throwing luggage in the back to the honk of other motorists. 

Something has changed, at least for me - something I cannot fully define in a way that makes sense to describe to anyone, and something I can scarcely write about coherently.  It is not precisely a depression or a sense that The End has come.  An end, perhaps.  More a sense that an era is passing away before our eyes and for most, they will only realize it when it is truly in the rear view mirror of their lives.

It is not a loss of hope, at least not yet.  Perhaps it is a quiet acceptance that things really are going to be different, no matter how much "the same" that they will seem - or that we will be told that they are.  Perhaps a sadness that a new generation will grow up not knowing the world which we have known for 20 to 70 years (depending on how one considers such things).

The wind continues to blow, thrashing the trees.  It is not the season for the leaves to fall though; they remain attached to the branches they emerged from only two months ago.  It is not their time.

Perhaps we are simply the leaves that are too stubborn to let go, clinging to the tree beyond our time until we, too, are cast to the wind.