The New Normal Isn't So Normal.

By Courtney Pierce

A mere nine months ago our lives held a sense of normalcy. We were full of hope on New Year’s Day, the kick-start for a new decade. After a hearty breakfast, the holiday decorations were carefully packed up and returned to their safe place in the garage. The Christmas music got a final play—always a bit melancholy with Dean Martin and Ottmar Liebert—while the house received a thorough sweep of dried tree needles. 

My retirement account statement had earned a hearty golf clap—a hole in one—so I figured that I had earned the right to put up my feet. My husband watched football while I perused a stack of cookbooks, making good on my commitment to try out new recipes. My stepdaughter sat next to me on the couch and began to compile the packing list for her much-anticipated trip to London over Spring Break. We were getting used to her daily practice of talking with a British accent. As a surprise for her, I’d tucked an ample wad of British currency in my safe. We wanted it to be a trip of a lifetime.  

Little did we know that our idealistic bubble of hope would soon collapse. 

On January 21^st, an unseen invader rolled over the country like a ground swell before an earthquake. The calamity started with confusion, then grew to denial and disbelief. Media-fueled fear soon forced us to lock our doors. Life was severely interrupted when the schools closed their doors, too, by mid-March. My stepdaughter’s hopes were crushed when her London trip was cancelled. A 14-year-old that is cooped up does nothing but sleep and eat. By May, I became convinced that CoVid-19 was so named because of the 19 grumpy pounds she’d gained while sleeping until mid-afternoon. Long distance learning was an outright joke as the teachers had no idea how manage it. 

Yikes! Even on bright sunny days we hunkered down, resentful and uninspired.

To shake off the malaise, we packed up the camping gear. After all, the governor had shut down a leisure industry that ushered in throngs of out-of-state visitors. We'd have the wilderness to ourselves, with no CoVid-19 critters to infect us. Fresh air, fresh fish, and a fresh perspective.

We found the entrances to our beautiful Glacier National Park laced with heavy chains. I thought only God could manage Glacier, but apparently I was wrong. How could a tiny virus eclipse the giant healing power of mountains, meadows and forested trails? Summer had started with everything becoming a downer:

Lockdowns. Closedowns. Stand-downs.

Political showdowns.  Ah hah! That was the culprit.

Something else was going on, and it had nothing to do with a contagion. We were being psychologically beaten down, along with a tear-down of our physical foundations. Control of the masses. What did chopping off Christopher Columbus's head on a statue have to do with eradicating a virus? But our resiliency had been grossly underestimated.  

Little things became rays of hope after I turned off the television and shut down the computer. These measures weren't taken out of ignorance or denial; they were about self-protection from dishonesty. The ubiquitous "they" couldn't strip us of our ability to persevere. I likened our plight to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: a good-versus-evil story in real time.

No one can take away my right to write. BIG SKY TALK soon blossomed with new chapters that never would've emerged without an engineered sequester. Words had the power to heal, soothe pain, and resurrect my inner superhero. The seasons continued to change. Like clockwork, the sun rose each morning to warm the crisp air. The stars still sprinkled the heavens at night to remind me that our world shone as only a penlight from a different planet.

That's the ticket! I needed a new perspective.

It came on a day toward the end of winter. I paused at the living room window—mesmerized—when I spotted a herd of twelve deer playing on the snow-covered frozen lake behind our house. Their hoof patterns from playful chase reminded me of the circle designs I used to make on my Spirograph as a child. Every week the patterns grew and changed until the ice finally retreated in April. Energized by spring’s last frost, we drew out the plan for the vegetable garden. I could already taste the sweetness of a ripe tomato, hear the snap of a home-grown string bean, and take in the fragrance of freshly picked parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Too bad we couldn't grow toilet paper and paper towels.

I dug out my CD of The Best of Simon and Garfunkel for inspiration. Great music for holding crappy feelings at bay. I discovered I loved the songs even more today than when I had first listened to them in the early seventies. Their music held up to the test of time.

And so would I.

By mid-June, the multiplication of wildlife offered me a front row seat to a living documentary of animal parenthood. Most people didn’t get to see fawns wobble unsteadily, sticking close to their mothers for an education about the day's buffet selection. 

Two dozen goslings had also invaded the yard to gobble up the freshly strewn grass seed. From behind the sliding glass door, I monitored the goslings’ transition from downy fuzz to honest-to-goodness feathers. Pride filled my heart at their progress.

The mated pairs of black-and-white Bufflehead ducks were among my favorites. Their sets of six ducklings, like miniature salt and pepper shakers, dutifully glided across the lake in a perfect little line with perfect little postures. My new normal became observing the wildlife before my eyes. They'd always been there, but I hadn't taken the time to truly appreciate their presence.

And then there were the two huge black bears that strolled through the yard, and another one that took a vigorous bath in the lake. Awesome sight. Somehow, all the other animals on the planet were able to dine out, work out, and ramble about. But not us humans. Maybe we should take it as a lesson that no one should ever have the right to deprive us of our freedoms.

The fly-over of young bald eagle, its speckled brown-and-white feathers anew, became a friendly reminder to not take anything for granted.

I look forward to retrieving those holiday decorations from the garage in a couple of months. I want a do-over. Renewed hope awaits with the familiar, the patriotic, and the traditions of our history. No one can ever take that away from us, even if the anarchists chop off the head of a Christopher Columbus statue, spray paint the Lincoln Memorial, or threaten to blow-up Mount Rushmore.

Minor things mean a lot, but I refuse to live in fear. People who are fearful are easier to manipulate with ridiculous demands. But the only control I truly have in all this mess is my ability to vote. And vote I will—in-person, without the threat of fraud or fear of a virus. 

And no one can ever re-write my history.  

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell, Montana with her husband, stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat. Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. She spent 28 years as an executive in the entertainment industry and used her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. She studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, Courtney is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and Authors of the Flathead. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

Print and E-books are available through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com.

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com 

New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."

Coming in 2021!

When Aubrey Cenderon moves to Montana after the death of her father, the peace and quiet of Big Sky Country becomes complicated with a knock on the door from the sheriff. An injured grizzly bear is on the loose and it must be eliminated before it kills again. The sheriff's insistence that she buy a gun for protection will present Aubrey with some serious soul-searching, because the grizzly-on-the-run is hunting for her too . . . for a different reason.