The summer of 2022: A desperate quest for an elusive normal

Larry Kessler is encouraged by his daughter Alana in the final stretch of the Arnold Mills Four Miler in Cumberland, R.I., on July 4th.

   
CUTLINE: Larry Kessler trails his daughter Alana, who had already finished the Arnold Mills 4-Miler in 34:17 on the Fourth of July, as he heads to the finish line. He did the race in 58:41. Alana went back on the course to encourage her very slow father to finish the race. (Photo by Alana Kessler)

While the COVID-19 pandemic drags on and shows no signs of ever completely going away nearly 2 ½ years after it began, many of us have decided to get along with our lives, at least as much as possible.
I tackled that issue in this column, which I wrote for the August 2022 edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence.

The link to the column, on the publication’s website, follows: https://www.jewishrhody.com/stories/its-time-for-me-to-rejoin-the-human-race,14665?

Last summer, despite being fully vaccinated, I was a long way from feeling “normal.” The constant warnings by medical and government officials urging people --- especially those of us in our late 60s and older --- to “remain vigilant” in the face of the continued threat from the COVID-19 pandemic was enough to limit my socializing.
As it turned out, we had barely less than two weeks of “normal” in July 2021, when President Biden urged Americans to celebrate the Fourth in person. But not long after those few days of optimism, the rise of the-then dominant Delta variant compelled the medical experts and many government officials to resume their non-stop warnings, which acted like an emotional blockade to any desire that I might have had to return to my pre-COVID activities.
So I took baby steps back into society. My wife and I avoided concerts and movie theaters, and as much as I wanted to, I didn’t go to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox. What I felt comfortable doing was to meet a few friends in restaurants for lunch as opposed to at a park or my backyard picnic table, and I marked my birthday in a restaurant. I also ran three in-person races.
Fast forward to this summer, when we’re still being bombarded by warnings about variants --- this time from Omicron. But one thing is different: I’m no longer content to hide from the world, or to follow some COVID-era policies such as social distancing that encourage isolation, sadness, and in some cases, depression.
Fortified by two COVID-19 boosters last November and May --- and fully expecting to get whatever variant-related booster becomes available in the fall --- I’ve become a bit more adventurous. That’s not to say I’m feeling “normal.” I still mask up in stores and other inside spaces and I refuse to fly or travel long distances, but I’m otherwise slowly rejoining the human race.
One of the reasons for wanting to return to more of my former pre-COVID life is that later this month I’ll mark one of those dreaded milestone birthdays --- it’s neither “the big 60” nor “the big 80” so you do the math. That convinced me that I no longer can afford to live my life in fear.
Why? Because even though I believe many doctors and medical experts who issue warnings are doing so because they’re doing their due diligence, those of us who got vaccinated and boosted can’t put our lives on hold indefinitely or stop living every time a variant is on the rise.
What I’ve come to realize, as this pandemic drags on with no end in sight, is that for those of us who are piling up the years, the pandemic will probably never go away, with new variants regularly cropping up.
Given that reality, it’s time to move on --- within reason. I’m tired of my psyche being scarred by the pandemic, which is now well into its third year. It would be unacceptable to live the rest of my life like a virtual hermit, and that’s why I’ve resumed a few more activities. Here are three highlights:
Back to the ballpark
I hadn’t been to a baseball game since 2019. Since that time, the 2020 Pawtucket Red Sox season --- its final one in Rhode Island --- was cancelled along with all of minor league baseball that year due to the pandemic, and last year I didn’t feel comfortable going to the ballpark.
But I jumped at the chance to attend last month’s PawSox Heritage Day at Polar Park in Worcester, Mass., which opened last year, when the PawSox moved there and became known as the WooSox (Worcester Red Sox).
I thoroughly enjoyed my first visit there, and I’ll be back, although it was a bittersweet day watching the Red Sox’s top minor league team play in a ballpark other than McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket. That venue had spoiled me, because it had been only a short 15-minute drive from my North Attleboro, Mass., home, while it’s at least a 45-minute ride down Route 146 in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts to Worcester.
Reconnecting with friends
The best remedy for my down-in-the-dumps pandemic hangover has been seeing old friends. I was fortunate to meet several of them for lunches in July --- many whom I hadn’t seen since well before the pandemic began. That was important to me, because the truth is that our friends, and not our bank accounts, are what make us rich.
People who valued virtual connections over human ones during the pandemic are way off base, because the truth is there’s absolutely no substitute for meeting loved ones in person.
On the road again
For the second year in a row, my younger daughter and I ran the Arnold Mills Four Miler in Cumberland on the Fourth of July. It was a big lift to again have spectators lining the streets to cheer us on.
After the pandemic had shut the course down in 2020, I vowed to relish each in-person race that I was able to do. But this year I felt especially fortunate to participate in the race after learning later that day of the tragic shooting at the Highland Park, Ill. parade. The fact that both the Arnold Mills race and the parade that followed went off incident free was a blessing and is something that we sadly can no longer take for granted.
LARRY KESSLER (larrythek65@gmail.com) is a freelance writer based in North Attleboro. He blogs at  https://larrytheklineup.blogspot.com