Homesick for Ordinary Life

A decade ago, when I was having one of life's challenging seasons, I remember telling myself that however bad things were now, it would take so little - just one phone call with some kind of unspeakably horrible news - for me to wish I had my current life back again, in every single detail.

That's how I feel right now.

I imagine it's how many of you feel, too.

In recent weeks, I've been complaining a bit about my return, for the first time in five years, to teaching philosophy courses at the University of Colorado. I felt awkward and foolish standing in front of the lecture hall, trying to pretend I was my younger, cooler self, working too desperately to get them to like me. In addition to my Intro to Ethics course at noon, I've been subbing in the Major Social Theories course for an instructor during his six weeks of paternity leave. I enjoyed his students greatly, but I'm not a late-afternoon person. How nice it would be when I didn't have to hang out in my office for hours waiting for that 3:00-4:15 teaching slot!

Now, like every university in the country, we've switched to online teaching for the entire rest of the semester; I'm struggling to figure out how to record lectures, how to post them on CU's online platform, how to structure conversations on "discussion boards." I would give anything to be going into campus on the Skip tomorrow and teaching my beloved students face-to-face. How I adored being with them, talking in a lively, animated, face-to-face way about John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and John Rawls.

In recent weeks I've also whined a bit about my daily visits to my husband in the care home where he now lives, completely incapacitated from advanced Parkinson's. I didn't have to go see him every day, but I had made a commitment to myself to do this, a commitment I typically honored five days out of seven. Oh, but it was a tedious drive across town with all those traffic lights! (Especially since twice in the last year I was rear-ended at one of these lights). He loved when I brought him meals, but that was more work and expense. And no one can say that nursing homes are not dreary places to visit, however kind and caring the staff.

Now, like every nursing home in the country, after first imposing strict limits on visitation, Manor Care is ceasing all in-person visits whatsoever as of tomorrow. I'm about to make my last visit to him - for weeks? for months? - in a couple of hours. I would give anything to continue seeing him every day to charge his cellphone, tidy his bedside table, wipe drips from his face and crumbs from his shirt, and watch something silly on TV together (the game show "Cash Cab" was my favorite). How I loved that sweet time we spent together!

I could go on and on with this list. I know you could go on and on with yours, too.

In the final act of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Emily, after dying young in childbirth, is given the chance to live again one ordinary day in her small town of Grover's Corners. With painful yearning for every instant of what she has left behind, she cries out, "Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for any one to realize you!" and asks plaintively, "Do any human beings ever realize life as they live it - every, every minute?"

We don't. We can't.

But coronavirus has made me want to try harder to do this. The writer Colette is quoted as saying, "What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner."

Me, too, Colette.