One of the things I miss in this new world of somewhat post-Covid existence are all of the casual conversations I once had with a wide variety of people. Perhaps our retirement and move to a new community exacerbated this, but were it not for Covid, I believe I would have already had more conversations with the folks at our church, at least. I’ve found that you can have a significant relationship with folks over Zoom, but Zoom meetings tend to lack the casual conversation about the little things in life. On the one hand, this means that Zoom meetings start and stop on time and require a smaller commitment. On the other hand, a source of stories that was once a part of my life seems to have dried up. I “know” people whose stories I don’t know.

However, a Zoom group with which I have been meeting for some time has finally gotten to the point where we know a little bit about each other. We’ve told a few stories while we waited for others to join the group and we’ve become a bit more casual about the first 5 and last 5 minutes of our meeting time. As a result I heard part of a story from someone. I don’t know the whole story and I am probably not getting things quite right, but the general story has two main parts. The first part of the story is that the person is contemplating a move out of state. The time has come for her to move on from her home and after meeting with a realtor and making an estimate of what she might net from the sale, she has decided that she cannot afford a new home in the current market in this area even though she is downsizing and looking for a smaller place. Her attention has turned to a city in another state where she has friends and she has planned a trip to that city to size up the market. As I understand it, no decisions have been made beyond the decision to sell her current home.

The second part of the story is that before she heads out of state, she is planning a trip to another city in our state because her son and his family are moving to that city. During the Covid pandemic, her son and his wife both were able to work remotely and have decided that a they no longer need to live near their jobs. They have decided to move to the Pacific Northwest where they feel they can live comfortably while working remotely. The woman has an opportunity to be with her grandchildren and see her son and daughter in law face to face, something that hasn’t occurred since the Covid-19 outbreak.

It is all a bit confusing and I really don’t know much of the story, but there are a couple of things that make a little bit of sense to me. One is that after a year of being physically isolated from her church and participating only by watching worship on social media and participating in committees and faith formation groups through Zoom, she feels that she is now capable of maintaining her most important relationships over a greater distance. She is comfortable with the idea of moving out of state, even if it means continuing to live in a different state than her son and his family with his new move. She doesn’t think that their move to her state means that the would see each other face to face any more often than they have when living in different states.

Also, as I understand it, her son and daughter-in-law both are confident that they will continue to be able to work remotely. I don’t know what careers they have, but I have read several articles about how corporations are discovering that it doesn’t work well to allow employees to work remotely. While granting employees a couple of days of work flexibility each week, companies that don’t require employees to come physically to work are experiencing a decrease in productivity and a disruption of team-based work. It is really too early to determine what the long-term effects of this will be, but it is pretty clear that there will be fewer jobs where people can work remotely full time now that vaccination is allowing the return to in person work. Without knowing any details, I wonder if there will be many people who have made moves during the pandemic who discover that their moves have resulted in the need for excessive commuting over large distances. I suspect that some of these folks will discover a desire to move back closer to their places of employment over time.

I wonder how it will work long term for the woman to maintain her relationships in her old town after she completes her move to the new place. There certainly are friendships that we have maintained over distance since we moved from one state to another. But there are others with whom we haven’t kept up except by asking other common friends for information. There are a lot of people that I used to see every week and with whom I had regular conversations with whom I have not had any conversations since we moved. I don’t know how much of this would have happened due to the pandemic, because the pandemic and our move happened at the same time. However, I think that now that we are returning to a bit more normalcy with our vaccinations, I suspect that I might have resumed seeing some of those people if we had not moved. I know I am eager to discover places of face-to-face meeting in our new town. We have already formed some new relationships. The clerk at the hardware store recognizes me. I’m beginning to remember the names of some of the checkers at the grocery store, but they wear name tags, which helps. I can’t wait for the return of face-to-face meetings at church. I’ll be there as soon as possible.

Whatever happens, it is clear that there is no going back to the way things were, but rather a going forward to something new. In the process, I’ll be looking for opportunities to engage in more casual conversation and hear more stories about the lives of those around me.