Afternoon cocktail, stroll at the mall… just like these were normal times

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/05/2020 (2214 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It is patio weather, though just barely. A crisp breeze nips at the nose and the tips of the fingers, and a chill shivers through the air when the sun slips behind a cloud. Yet it is warm enough to linger outside; warm enough for a couple nearby to lounge in light jackets, sipping Caesars and laughing as if it were any other spring day.

This is not just any other day, not really. It is the end of one phase, and of another a beginning. It is Day 1 of what provincial public-health officials say will be a gradual reopening, a slow return to the way things were. It looks closer to what we think of as “normal,” but after seven weeks of cancelled everything, it feels very strange.

Still, it’s not strange enough to keep some people away, after being so long restricted. So it’s busy here, on the patio of this chain restaurant, where couples and small groups of friends gather for drinks in the mid-afternoon breeze. It’s about as busy as they expected, the server tells me; his eyes are friendly, over a black mask.

This is not the server’s first day back at work. He’s been there the whole time, he says, chatting as he pulls up a bill. For the last seven weeks, the restaurant was open for pickup and delivery, so he was working on that; still, he adds, it feels good to actually see people again, face-to-face, in the flesh.

But there are so many rules now that weren’t there before. The patio is limited to seating fewer than 30 people at once to conform to social-distancing guidelines; on the way into the restaurant, the host cheerfully points at a list of new regulations about hygiene and space, and asks a customer to read them before being seated.

“Some people just left, so we just have to sanitize a table for you,” he says, the word “sanitize” having seamlessly replaced the word “clean” to emphasize how the action both combats a virus and meets public-health regulations.

This will be hard to shake, the way everything we do and even the words that we use, have changed.

Nearby, Polo Park is open for the first time in weeks. It too is busy, though there is little to see and even less to buy. Most stores remain closed; customers line up to get inside the few that are open.

Some still closed have signs on the windows announcing they will resume business later this week; others still bear signage put up when they closed March 18.

It’s all sort of surreal, and yet there is something curious about returning to public space after so long away, and so people wander the mall in groups of twos and threes. Couples and parents with teen kids, mostly, following arrows placed on the floor, marking out a looping one-way route around the mall.

As they stroll, most are careful to stay two metres apart. In the big empty space, it isn’t too hard.

There are a few spots of life. At a gift store near the entrance, a young staff member stands by a chain strung across the aisle, wearing a mask and plastic gloves. She asks a customer to read a list of rules before entering — don’t come in if you’ve been sick, that kind of thing — and gives them a squirt of hand sanitizer before lifting the chain.

This is almost certainly not what she signed up for when she took the job. Nobody starts working in retail imagining it will someday put them on the front lines of a still-unfolding pandemic. And many mall jobs pay minimum wage, or just cents above it; suddenly they are tasked with enforcing public hygiene with lives depending on it.

That’s a lot to ask of anyone, but this is what it means when people such as Premier Brian Pallister stress the importance of getting Manitobans back to work: it means that some people have to go first. It means some must place themselves in front of the public, even when that comes with some unknown but added risk.

Maybe we will emerge from this more grateful for everyone who held up those lines, especially where it was not so well-rewarded. Maybe we will emerge more appreciative of how much it takes to keep the basic flow of everything together. Maybe we will remember the pattern of who the pandemic most abruptly affected.

And maybe we will emerge ready to savour the simplicity of small freedoms: of buying a greeting card, of strolling through the mall, of sitting on a restaurant patio and sipping Caesars on a fresh spring day. It still feels strange to receive those moments — and even a little wrong — but there is something in them that soothes.

Back at the restaurant, the server flits between empty tables, wiping them down with sanitizer. He pauses for a while, to chat with a customer. Their voices float over the breeze, discussing some of the new rules, the new way of doing something as simple as going out for a drink.

“It’s going to be a very weird time here for a little bit,” the server says.

The customer nods, and gives a little shrug. “It’s understandable,” he replies.

 

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca