There's no doubt about it...the stay-at-home advisory is really starting to get old for a lot of people.

There has been nothing in our lifetimes to compare with it. Not since World War II has the entire country, at every level, been so disrupted for so long, with no idea when we would be able to "get back to normal." After 9/11, flights were grounded for days and fear was palpable in the air. Some things, such as traveling by air, were changed permanently. But this is different. This is a silent adversary that spreads everywhere, can't be seen or felt, keeps changing shape, and potentially threatens everyone who breathes.

But most people aren't being affected directly by COVID-19. It's hard not to feel impatient, because there is no evidence for what would have happened without the stay-at-home measures and the closing of schools and workplaces and stores. It's hard not to think of that old joke about the man throwing strips of paper out of a train window in Nebraska. Asked by his seatmate what he was doing, the man said he was scaring the elephants away so they wouldn't get on the track and wreck the train.

"But there are no elephants in Nebraska," the puzzled seatmate said.

"You see? Works pretty well, doesn't it?" the man said proudly.

But we know that COVID-19, unlike phantom elephants, is all too real. What we don't know is what our lives will look like from now on, because we can't know for sure that COVID-19 will ever go away. Approximately half the people who are infected have no symptoms at all, but are contagious. They feel fine but they're spreading the virus unknowingly, like COVID Typhoid Marys. With the lack of testing, we don't know how many people have the virus, or had it and recovered, or even how long it's been in the United States. We're adding to our knowledge about who is most at risk from serious complications and why, and how the virus kills the people who die from it. Every day the news is different. We've never done this before. We're "learning on the job," putting together the pieces as we go.

Because of this, stopping the physical distancing precautions and "going back to normal" would be premature, at best, because we have no way of knowing just what we'd be letting ourselves in for.

Meanwhile, our patience is wearing thin. Traffic around Winchendon is scary--everyone is driving very fast when they do go out, and they're going out quite a lot. I see many people out without face masks or coverings. It doesn't help that it's been a cold, raw, slow spring, with temperatures below freezing, cold rain, snow, and dark gloomy days even though May is only a week away and the daffodils are blooming.

Maybe it will help if we don't think in terms of "going back to normal" in the sense of "going back to the way everything used to be." There was a great deal about the old "normal" that needed to change. With everything up in the air, this is our chance to re-make the whole foundation our lives will rest on. Yes, we need school to be back in session, we need our jobs and our incomes back, we need our daily routines. We need to feel secure that we can get food and pay for housing and utilities. But for many of us, life wasn't that great before COVID-19 stopped everything.

This is our chance to think, to imagine, to make plans. We'll be going back, not to "the way things were" but to a "new normal." What do we want that to be? What can we be doing now to make it so?

Inanna Arthen