Zoom Life

Zoom life, it's how we are living these days. 
Yes, things still happen IRL, but our days revolve around one online meeting after another.
X-eyed is how we feel.
What happened?
Virtual figures have replaced flesh and blood companions and colleagues.
Unfortunately, this situation isn't going to end anytime soon, we have been here since early March when went out to dinner at a cozy French  bistro with another couple on a Wednesday night and woke up to a new reality on Thursday morning; since then we, the at-risk, have been dutifully washing our hands, wearing masks, avoiding fellow shoppers as we hunt for toilet paper, Clorox wipes, bleach, hand sanitizer, rice, beans, pasta and wine.
Tired as we are of it, we are here until there's a vaccine.
Safe, we stay at home.
Really, though, we have been busy in Zoom life.
Quarantine cocktails with friends on screens is better than not seeing them at all. 
Photography classes are actually improved by seeing the images on a twenty-seven-inch monitor at your desk. 
Other things, not so much. 
Not facetiming with family you want to hug.
Meetings where you can't see half the participants because they can't figure out where the camera is on their computers aren't that satisfying either. 
Let's be honest, we are hungry for our old lives.
Kindness and all the other human traits we love in others are harder to express in those little horizontal boxes.
Just be patient, we tell ourselves.
Imagine how wonderful it will be when we can come fully out of our cocoons.
How amazing it will be to dance and sing or just sit and gossip with more than five. 
Gatherings!
Finally, we will be rewarded for our compliance. 
Everyone will appreciate all the small things we took for granted. 
Dinner tables crowded with friends, afternoons at the pool, live music.
Can't you see us that way we used to be?
But we will never be completely that way again.
After all this, the world will be inevitably altered and so will we.