Waiting Game

Nu-In Fashion vest (similar)
Oak + Fort trousers (c/o) (similar)
Oak + Fort mules (similar)
Vintage belt (similar)
Mejuri bracelet (similar)
Mejuri ring (similar)
Location: Osborne Village – Winnipeg, Manitoba

(Of course, immediately after saying I’ve returned to wearing primarily black clothes, I appear in a cream and beige outfit. Typical.)

A year ago this week, we entered our last week of normalcy – but we didn’t really know it. Certainly, there were signs. Newspaper reports about COVID-19 grew increasingly frequent and alarming with every passing day. But we didn’t truly know what was coming. I was on the point of booking a flight to Edmonton to hand off a client to one of my colleagues, but procrastinated about doing it, mostly because I didn’t need to rush… I could book the day before if it came down to it.

As the week progressed, the likelihood of my taking that trip decreased with each passing day. On the Thursday, I met my cousin at a local restaurant for champagne to congratulate her after a big job interview. We jokingly bumped elbows rather than hugging, a major change for us. And we both washed our hands before touching our drinking glasses. The next day, I made arrangements for my staff members working from offices to transition to work from home effective immediately.

That was a year ago. At the time, the lockdown measures seemed extreme – but also likely to resolve the problem so that we could get back to normal quickly. How naive we were, back then. Now, twelve months later, much and little has changed. And we find ourselves in a strange waiting game, still locked down but with a theoretical end vaguely in sight on a distant horizon.

The whole year has felt like a waiting game for me, if I’m honest. Waiting for the results of scientific studies, waiting for restrictions to ease so we could at least see close family, waiting for a vaccine to be developed and now, waiting to receive it. I’ve never loved games. I’m pretty good at cribbage, and will generally play cards if pressed, but I won’t go near a Monopoly board. I can’t recall the last time I attempted to play a video game. The truth is, while I understand intellectually that those games are meant to be fun, they aren’t for me. Waiting games are never fun, and this one in particular was tedious from the start.

But I’m playing, anyway. I have no real choice in the matter. I’m comfortable with uncertainty, a year into the game, in a way I never expected to be. What I think I can reasonably expect the next few months to look like changes with every passing news report. In the morning, I might be getting vaccinated in July – by afternoon, that can change to May. Restrictions related to where we can and can’t go, who we can and can’t see, are ever evolving. The act of staying informed without obsessing is an art unto itself. My technique is improving, but I have to practise every day, every second.

The worst thing about this waiting game, I think, is that we don’t truly know what we’re collectively waiting for – much like we didn’t know what we were walking into a year ago this week. We’ll get vaccinated, but then what? Can we throw parties to celebrate a return to normalcy? Can we immediately book plane tickets to anywhere, just to escape the monotony of our own surroundings? Or is there more time to spend waiting for normal life to be declared safe to live again?

We don’t know. Not one of us.

…what I do know is that personally, I’m waiting for the day that my parents come to pick me up out front of my apartment… the moment Dad gets out of the car to take my suitcase even though I can lift it myself. The sound of the trunk closing, the feeling of anticipation as I step into the car and put on my seatbelt, knowing that the next seatbelt I put on will be in seat 18C. Pulling up to the Departures terminal at the airport, the silver automatic doors beckoning me inside. All around me, strangers hugging loved ones good-bye and saying, “See you soon!” Waving good-bye to Mom and Dad as I wheel my suitcase over the concrete and into the building where I’ll turn it over to a gate agent, not meeting it again until I reach my destination – wherever that may be.

If this waiting is, indeed, a game, that’s the day when I’ll know I’ve won.

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