Reconnecting after a two-year lockdown feels like the first day of school

My child’s return to school has provided the perfect metaphor for society’s enthusiastic, but hesitant return to social life.

We can’t wait. We’ve been looking forward to this for so long! But we’re apprehensive. We’re not sure what this phase of our lives will hold.

Still, we venture forth, favouring optimism over fear…

In that sense, the reopening of society after a two-year Covid lockdown, is like starting Grade 4.

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As I take my daughter shopping for her uniform and read through the reams of school rules, I am simultaneously updating my own wardrobe with apparel that is not underpants and a T-shirt I got for free. I need stuff that will be acceptable as office wear. 

Because we’re back in the office, my colleagues and I. You can feel the nervous, excitable energy.

Some days have been exactly like first day of school. Updates to be shared, new processes to learn, and new people to meet – even if we’ve been co-workers for a year and only dealing with each other on Teams. 

At work, they’ve refurbished the canteen and got a new supplier. They’ve moved the desks around and put in a pause area. And told us to try come in twice a week. I believe there’s a schedule somewhere. 

At Liso’s school, they’re far braver.

It’s full-on, everyday, in-person tuition. Extra-murals, multiple classrooms, PE, swimming, dancing, and building robots. They’ve also introduced social-distancing dividers at the tuck-shop queue. 

But the challenge the two of us share most acutely is our battle to overcome our shyness. That deeply human battle between love and fear.

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We so desperately want to meet new people, to rekindle our dormant relationships with old colleagues, but we’re anxious, clumsy, our social skills have atrophied over those lonely, terrifying months in the lounge, watching those numbers rise and fall like a barometer of our future viability as a species.

As I encourage my little daughter on this next step of her journey through life, it strikes me that I should take some of my own advice. Because just as she is, I am also entering a new growth phase. A new stage of my education. 

“Be brave, my girl,” I tell her.

“Everyone is feeling a bit shy, and it is scary on the first day of term. They’ll appreciate it if you go over and introduce yourself. Everyone wants to make new friends. Just walk up to someone and say, ‘Hi, I’m Liso!’”

The way I tell it, it sounds like I’m the most gregarious person in Joburg, instead of just another withdrawn, ostensibly busy colleague sitting at a desk all by himself, away from everybody.

Because I have to do lots of phoner interviews and I need quiet, apparently. 

New cliques and friend groups begin to crystallise in the office, around a smoke break, a coffee, a lunch trip to Chicken Licken… I make a solitary lunch outing to Pick n Pay for half-price sushi. But sushi, especially, is a dish best enjoyed with company. 

Like a child in need of friends – which I am – I change tack. I leave Pick n Pay and head for that Soul Food. I give Kevin a quick call. Before lunch I saw him slumped before his design screens. Another solitary figure. 

“Boet, d’you want Chicken Licken?” I ask “I’m in the drive-thru now. You want me to bring you some back? What would you like?”

Kevin is in!

And so, over two Feed My Cravings, freshly culled from an Epsom Downs fast-food outlet, Kevin and I rekindle our friendship.

Meanwhile somewhere on the Grade 4 playing fields, something similar is going down.

People are emerging, reconnecting. We’re going back to school!

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