Mondays with Mike: Back to …

This past Friday, Chicago dropped most of the pandemic restrictions. We still are required to wear masks on public transportation (something I think I may do forever) and in certain other circumstances like schools, medical facilities, etc. (All of this relaxation applies only to vaccinated people—how we can tell who’s whom, I don’t know.)

Thank goodness one of our top happy places made it.

Also last Friday, right before Beth and I were about to mask up to leave our building for a walk, I got an email from our condo building management office. Same message: Vaccinated? You don’t have to wear a mask in the building anymore. As we walked naked-faced down the hall to the elevators, a couple from across the hall emerged with their Boston Terrier.

They did a doubletake and one of them looked at us with puzzlement, “Does this mean…”. I said, yes, indeed, we’d all been released. He yanked off his mask.

Because not everyone had gotten the memo yet, we walked out the lobby to some funny looks.

I believe some of us may go on wearing masks in the building in solidarity with staff, who are still required to wear them

This past weekend became a challenge to break a habit that’d been built over the last year+. It’s going to be weird for a while. I’m keeping a mask with me—in case I need one, but at this point, it’s also a security blanket.

A couple of generous friends gave us tickets to Jazz Showcase, and the joint was jumping when we arrived. Good thing we had those tickets! The owner had to turn away quite a few walkups.

It was a relief to see our local businesses packed all weekend—inside and outside on patios. Essentially, this was the weekend they could say, “We made it.”

And it was jarring. Once you spend months developing a survival sensibility that says, “Wear masks, crowds are bad,” you can’t just turn it off.

Plus, there’s this: For those of us who wore parkas to dinner, sat next to firepits outside, and sat inside next to giant open windows in 20-degree weather, there was a tiny bit of melancholy. The hardcore regulars of these places bonded with each other and with staff and owners.

As one proprietor confided to me as we eyed a sea of filled tables: “I liked it better when there were fewer people.”

And a note about your waiters, waitresses, bartenders, and owners: These poor folks lost lots of staff who have moved on. And they’re gearing up on the fly to meet ferocious, pent-up demand. Be kind.

Of course, it’s terrific that they’re fully opened again. And I wish the pandemic had never happened.

But I, like a lot of people who I’ve talked to, am spending some time putting on the brakes a little. My calendar’s getting full, fast.

But do I want my life to be as busy as it was before all this? As, at times, frenzied?

I’m not sure.