Blessings and curses

It's noon on a weekday, and my husband and I glare at each other from our anchored locations on opposite couches.

He has the remote control and is binge-watching the kind of junk television that doesn't even whet my appetite.

It's one of the eleventy-billion made-for-streaming sci-fI crime romance comedies that is trying to stop the end of the world by reversing some ionic polarization in the molecular cortex.

Apparently, it's very popular.

I'm trying to read. But I can't get my mind to focus on any of the words' meanings as my eyes scan the typeface. I just hold the book and turn pages. They feel pulpy and rough to my hands, which are just as pulpy and rough from all the washing. I can't process any more things that seem new.

At least until I feel like I am winning the war against touching my face. Sure, I've advanced ground on that front, but I don't want to be smug. One sense of an itch in a moment of absent abandon could destroy all the urges I've repressed.

The kids are upstairs, in their separate rooms, doing schoolwork.

They aren't fighting as much, which is both a blessing and a curse.

Battling over the little things - like how long Tweedle Dee is taking in the bathroom or why did I let Tweedle Dum eat the last slice of toast - is what makes a family feel normal.

Having a kid wait patiently in the hallway as his older sibling hogs all the hot water is something no parent is entirely ready to accept as anything but an altered reality.

The saddest part is that it only took a pandemic and the fear of shared surfaces and soggy towels that have them agreeing to use the kids' bathroom instead of the master.

I don't care what we've all said in the past. We may want our New Normal to be brimming with kindness and human decency, but we have to be ready for the desperation, too.

We are distancing ourselves, too.

Six feet is an ominous length for the space between us.

It's hard to admit how lucky we are in this suspended unknown. We have a house and a sanitized digital tether to the outside.

Though I worry a certain Big-cat collectors' crime documentary making the rounds is just another insidious pathogen, we didn't do enough to protect ourselves against.

My husband puts a drink on the table in front of me. It's sweet and weak, just the way I like them.

He searches the channels for a comedy. The kids appear from their rooms and settle in to watch comic actresses disassembling a male-centered spy-motif.

There is much laughter.

And then we'll watch guinea pigs save the world.

Why not?

Soon it will be midnight of that same weekday. The kids will be in bed; maybe they will be asleep when I crack open their doors to peek in.

But I won't chastise if I find their faces lit by the blueish glow of a computer screen. Nor will I call attention to any better use of time. I will let them wake when they want and work through it at their own pace.

This may be the new normal. But it assumes none of this is normal yet.