Jill Ebstein

The other day, I was at the grocery store — my source of amusement and connection with people at large during and post-COVID. I say “post-COVID,” knowing we will never be truly “post,” but at least we are not in the state of trauma we once were.

When I asked the cashier, Joe, with whom I am on a first-name basis, “How goes it?” I heard a big sigh. I continued looking at Joe, waiting for an answer, and then he finally said, “I’m OK. Not good. Not horrible. I am …,” and then he let out another sigh.

Maybe sighs are better than words, especially when words are hard to find. Sighs leave us to fill in the blank. I suspect Joe’s sigh has much to do with our redesigned lives. Redesigned because so many of our previous pleasures are history. Gone are the days we’d say, “Let’s meet at the restaurant.” And movie theaters, those ancient-looking buildings with “closed” signs on them? Will Netflix become a verb that means to watch a movie via streaming, much like Xerox means to copy?

Here’s a sigh I often feel: How do we greet people now? I sometimes ask, “Are you accepting hugs?” Other times, I don’t ask and simply use the Asian tradition of gently bowing my head with no hand extended. When I was in a synagogue last week, the clergy carried the Torahs around the sanctuary for the first time since COVID began. Right after the procession, my friend came racing down the aisle with hand sanitizer and spritzed some on me before I could even ask why. But I knew why.

I write this piece just as the almighty COVID has tagged my husband. With four jabs in him, he seems basically fine but uncomfortable. So far, I have tested negative, though I have a cold and cough. I wear a mask when going out because of exposure to my husband and because of my cold. With my mask on, I have to work extra hard to be heard, but I’m OK with that. It gives me a reason to speak less. It does make me wonder whether, in the future, a cold will always take on grand adjustments of behavior.

Do you remember the time when a cold was just a cold? Another sigh. When the threshold for whether you went to school or work was whether you had a fever? Another sigh. Those times seem so long ago that just remembering them makes me feel old.

The cashier, Joe, on that Monday morning, did not know what his wordless sigh would mean to me. I thought about it a lot. It felt like a sigh of acceptance about our new altered reality. The word “great,” or “fine,” or even “holding steady” did not fit as honest answers to “How’s it going?” But the big sigh did. It spoke to a wistful resignation.

It turns out that sighing is a dominant reaction we experience far more than we realize. Scientists estimate that the average person lets out a sigh, described as a “slightly longer breath,” 12 times an hour. The sigh can mean many things — relief, stress, sadness or shock. It can also be a way for us to maintain lung function by reinflating alveoli. So, there’s a healthy aspect to the sigh.

But more than anything, the sigh is our respiratory version of a cry. It’s one way of saying we need support without using words. We don’t even need to say why at that moment.

So, what did I say to Joe while standing at the register? I have a habit of being what my daughter calls a “positivity washer.” I see the sunny side, which is not always appreciated. I’m learning, though. I looked at Joe, just as he had looked at me before the sigh. Instead of saying, “Where we are won’t last,” I said, “I get it. There is no sugar coating for what we’ve been through or where we are.”

And then? I sighed — a long sigh, followed by, “I’ll see you next week.”

What was I thinking as I headed out? Percy Bysshe Shelley’s line in “Ode to the West Wind,” “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

Jill Ebstein is the editor of the “At My Pace” series of books and the founder of Sized Right Marketing, a consulting firm. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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