After Hurricane Sandy, the entire lower level of our home was destroyed. During the rebuilding of our home I gave my husband a gift. I told him he could have the downstairs den as a “man-cave.” He opted to turn it into a home movie theater with ten theater seats and a large screen television.

Once the theater was done, we developed a new routine. On the first Saturday night of every month (sometimes changing weekends for life events) we would go out to the local diner, The Golden Reef, for dinner with four other couples and then come back to our house for a movie. We jokingly referred to our little group as “The Movie Club.”

Since 2013, the  Movie Club has been a constant for us. In December, 2019 one of our members passed away but his wife continued on. Our last official Movie Club was March 8, 2020. While we have seen one another since then, socializing outside, Movie Club has been on Covid hiatus.

As we have all been vaccinated we decided to reestablish Movie Club. Walking into our diner was like returning home, the manager enthusiastically welcomed us and gave us our usual table, with our usual server. She ran up to us extremely excited to see us, happily engaging with us, and even remembering our usual drink orders.

I have not been inside that diner since March 8, 2020. Before that I had been there at least three times a month. As I looked around the diner a strange feeling came over me. While it looked a bit different, the tables were socially distanced and the booths were separated by plexiglass, it was still, very much, the same. While I was taking it all in, I found it hard to grasp that over a year had passed since I sat in that diner. It was very surreal.

Have you experienced the strange feeling of “normal?”