The New Not-Normal

On three years since Unprecedented Times changed everything

Each time I crack an egg, I scoop out the egg white with my finger, loosening its lingering clinging to the shell. My dad taught me how to cook like this: to use every last bit of each egg, to take care not to waste. He’d remind me how my grandmother taught him to do the same. She lived through the Great Depression and World War II, told him stories of scarcity on the shelves and rations for butter and sugar. 

I always looked at cakes with awe, the abundance of enough ingredients to indulge.

Every morning that I scramble eggs, I return to my father and my grandmother, gently chasing each last drop of egg white out of the shell. Generations of memories and a century of stories have shaped my daily practice, now the instinct of muscle memory.

We don’t waste any part of the egg, I remind my children. 

Papa taught me how to do that. His mom taught him, too. Do you want to know why?

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What might my grandchildren know of the pandemic they never lived through? 

How will their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences—of loss and scarcity and upheaval and unknown—shape their daily lives?

How do we hold trauma, collective or personal, in our bones?

Humans want to avoid the pain of grief, the wounds of trauma. Thank God we can in the moment, so we can survive. But later, once the earthquake and its aftershocks have settled, how do we emerge from the rubble? Where can we place our mess of emotions, our thorny tangle of experiences?

What can bring us hope after everything has broken apart?

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Three times in the past year I have sat on a Zoom call with an editor, talking about my new manuscript.

Three times I have watched them visibly recoil when I mention the pandemic. We’re recommending authors remove anything about that time from their books right now. People aren’t wanting to read or reflect about it. It’s best to leave it out.

Three times I have signed off the call and sat in the empty afterglow of the Zoom screen, sifting through what I have learned about grief and trauma, knowing what we don’t talk about will come out sideways later, in harder ways than facing it head on.

Three times I have opened up the manuscript again, highlighted another section of a chapter, cut and pasted it into another doc. “Pandemic Reflections—Save” grows while the manuscript gets leaner. A better book for now, perhaps. But what about the truths we don’t want to see on the page? 

If not now, then when?

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One friend tells me that 2020 was the worst year of her life. Wrecked her marriage, her mental health, her motherhood, her career.

Another friend looks back longingly: simpler days, less frantic running, more time for meals together, a return to creative hobbies she once loved.

I led a retreat on friendship last week. Did you know that half of Americans lost a good friend during Covid? Not just among the millions who died, but among the billions of us who became bitterly divided, embroiled in culture wars and endless political debates.

We lost so much. Each of us could enumerate a different list. 

But we don’t talk about it. Not anymore.

We shudder, shivering off the memories. Great to be back to normal, isn’t it?

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What I want to do today in this space is something different.

Rather than spin you a story, thoughtful or theological, I want to make space for you to share a sliver of your own.

What you learned from the pandemic. What you miss from Before. What griefs or losses you still hold that no one noticed. What will never be the same. What might yet be. What you want to lament, but haven’t had the time or place or words to name. What you know in your bones, from your corner of the world.

What you hope future generations might remember after you are gone.

If you’d like to share any piece of it here, I’d be honored to help hold it for you. While I understand what those editors are saying, I am also convinced we need to speak more of what happened. To help each other heal from what still hurts. To change what might come next.

But beyond here and now, I hope you’ll take a moment or two in the next week to let yourself sift back over those memories: the first lockdowns, the sudden shock of everything changing, the isolation, the anxiety, the rare bursts of community, the endless drag of day after day, the rise and fall of news and emotions and numbers and questions.

Maybe scribble down a few words. Maybe pray through a few memories. Maybe take a deep breath and look at the truth of what still needs the light of healing in your life.

You and I survived Unprecedented Times. Now we are back to some strange version of normal—but it still feels anything-but. What story could we tell, going forward, if we started sharing more of what we went through to make it here?