Last Normal News Today

The essayist proves once again she’s the secret chronicler of our private humiliations and small joys.

What was normal is now a room full of strangers searching the darkness for someone who kisses a grandmother who has never gone this long without embrace. Weren’t we always afraid that saying you love someone was a means of killing them slowly? Oh, the answers we thought we wanted. We remember the last normal day, which sounds like a story in the Bible. Verses containing how we loved “in the time of Corona” and in the time of everything else. Some of us remember better and some of us see t...

Ideally, at some point in 2021, we will collectively and tacitly agree to take 2020 and throw it in the garbage—a necessary step in the process of emerging from the collective mental health crisis that is living during the pandemic. It’s difficult in the moment to remember what “normal” was, because the mind is already working to figure out what a “new” normal will be—a vague concept, impossible to imagine and difficult to plan for. At some point in the near future, the general po...