My ‘COVID-19-shelter-in-place’ menu allows me to eat whatever I want without the fear of offending anyone’s olfactory receptors. I can even walk to the store with spinach stuck between my teeth and no one will notice.

Behind a mask and with physical distancing things look and feel so different now. And that include not being able to share a smile with anyone except when I’m on a video conversation. (At the supermarket the other day I gratefully beamed behind my thick bandana mask at the deli server and said what must have sounded like “mmhamm hoom!!!”).

Life from the-shoulders-up and behind-a-mask is a new experience for me and for everyone else I know. Day by day it is becoming less odd and more normal. Is this what the frog was feeling as it was sitting in the gradually boiling water?! 

This is not what I would want it to be as the ultimate normal for the future, neither near nor far. Yet I am afraid that it will be hard to switch back to anything like the pre-COVID-19 at the speed it has taken to embrace the current behaviour.

And life from-the-shoulders-up and behind-a-mask has taught me the value of slowing down my words and actions and place more intention behind every one of them.

So if you see me on the street, just know that I am smiling at you from the bottom of my heart.