Celebrating a milestone during Covid-19 will take some creativity

“We sense that ‘normal’ isn’t coming back, that we are being born into a new normal: a new kind of society, a new relationship to the earth, a new experience of being human,” says public speaker Charles Eisenstein.

The above words sunk in well over the weekend. We celebrated my partner’s lockdown birthday and I realised how less creative and spoilt we have been during the “normal” times.

In the BC (Before Corona) era, we would be returning from a weekend destination today. It would have been a weekend to remember with less effort from me as her partner. The florist would have delivered a bunch of sunflowers (her favourites) at her office with a sweet message on the card. All that would have been done on my phone and with no hassle at all.

However, we are not going back to normal. Her birthday was two days after stage 4 was introduced. When things were “normal” I was simply going to go on the internet and log on to the website of a popular online florist, order flowers and a box of her favourite chocolates. They would be delivered at her workplace and score me some brownie points just a few days before her birthday. We would then proceed to go to her favourite restaurant or do a picnic lunch. All that was wishful thinking.

I didn’t anticipate such a long lockdown. I knew that we wouldn’t be able to take a sho’t left and explore the beautiful land of South Africa. But I thought the categorisation of essentials and non-essentials would have been a thing of the past. I thought one could get a gift at any store. Most of the “gift ideas” were considered non-essential, understandably so. I was out of ideas.

It was so challenging to come up with a thoughtful and romantic idea to make her birthday memorable. We honestly need to come up with brilliant new gestures to celebrate these milestones. I saw a video of a woman who had a “driveway” baby shower celebration. Basically, her friends planned a surprise drop-off of gifts for her soon-to-be-born baby. The rain was showering as they were showering her with gifts. It was a perfect day and they didn’t break the lockdown rules.

It is the sweetest thing if you want to see the beauty of the Covid-19 new way of living. I shed a tear.

I was looking forward to a surprise weekend getaway. I was looking forward to a road trip, something she had been hinting about. I was ready. I was also ready to go to all stores in the country to find her favourite shoes as a gift. But that wasn’t going to happen under these circumstances.

We are heading towards the new normal, and it will require us to be a bit more creative and put more effort into how we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and other milestones. I’m glad that I could put together a good meal for her. Free advice to men: we better find our way around the kitchen. It looks like the new way to a woman’s heart is through a good meal too.

On the 18th of March, the headline of my column read: “Ladies, socks and sex are not birthday gifts.” This was just a week before lockdown started. In hindsight, which is not a science, I realise that if my birthday fell within stage 5 or 4 or the lockdown, I would’ve certainly appreciated a pair of socks as a gift.

We need to come up with romantic and thoughtful gestures within the lockdown laws that are going to take away the breath of our loved ones, because “normal” isn’t coming back.

Lest we want socks!

Kabelo Chabalala is the founder and chairperson of the Young Men Movement (YMM), an organisation that focuses on the reconstruction of the socialisation of boys to create a new cohort of men. Email, kabelo03chabalala@gmail.com; Twitter, @KabeloJay; Facebook, Kabelo Chabalala

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