A Maine-crafted quilt can take your breath away. Its beauty comes from sometimes disparate squares which blend together, turning ordinary fabric into a unique work of art.

Along this Maine coast, our lives are very similar to the quilt maker’s fabrication. Like the quilter’s squares, our life here is a blend of small-scale local happenings and the human contacts in our daily routines.

We’re all speculating about what the new normal will look like. Slowly emerging signs of it are already with us and should be a wake-up call to reverse direction.

Because of social distancing and the governor’s no more than 10 people at an event, our home calendar has been butchered, leaving a mess of unreadable X-outs of the local happenings that traditionally have been a major part of the fabric of our lives.

Parents have had to cope with the plug being pulled on their son or daughter’s prom, school and town recreation sports being canceled, the libraries closed, and the May Day parade and festivities called off.

The annual Plant and Pie Sale and the Rotary Chicken BBQ didn’t take place. The Chamber’s week-long “Launch” celebration was sunk, and the spring exhibits at the Brick Store had to be postponed.

Each year we buy one show at area summer theaters: Ogunquit Playhouse, Brunswick Music Theater and Hackmatack Playhouse. All three canceled their 2020 seasons.

Our 2020 Maine Bicentennial will have to wait until 2021. The Gooch’s Beach fireworks are canceled. Add to that list: art shows, Saturday night bean suppers, craft fairs, TD Beach to Beach 10K, Sea Dogs baseball and Fryeburg Fair.

Already feeling isolated because of the pandemic, we’ve lost many of the happenings which traditionally have brought our communities closer together. This increasing isolation and fear has led to medical reporting that home alcohol consumption — nationally and here in Maine, has dramatically increased. More people are drinking alone and aren’t waiting until its 5 o’clock or the sun is over the yardarm.

Prescription numbers for anti-depression and anti-insomnia drugs are soaring and calls to suicide hotlines are reaching record levels. Churches, the keystones of our communities and our life rafts during troubled waters had to shut their doors until recently because of the 10 person limit.

It can’t be denied, this highly contagious virus has gotten into our psyche with the deaths of more than 115,000 Americans, including more than 100 fellow Mainers.

When I hear the name of the “Beast,” I remember a PBS documentary on dangerous Australian wildlife. A clip showed a large, and highly poisonous snake flatten itself and then slither under a perfectly good exterior door.

That snake’s easy entry into that seemingly secure home always reminds me how meager are our defenses — 6–feet distancing and cloth masks, when the “Beast” comes silently slithering into our lives.

Another ominous forewarning of the new normal is a voluntary retreat from human interaction and the growing regulation of what’s left of it. It’s not hard to lean in that direction when, until June 1, when Kennebunk’s Main Street was deserted and the Kennebunkport’s sidewalks were empty.

In the not too distant past, we looked forward to our routines and the stops that had become part of the fabric of our small town life.

Many of our contacts with the few essential businesses that were still open had been conducted at bullet-proof and hopefully germ-free drive-through windows. We stand outside of plexiglass-protected check-out registers. Customers stand at 6-foot intervals and there’s no what was once normal chit-chat. Register receipts are placed on the counter or passed to you on a small tray. There is no physical contact.

Ironically, your best opportunity for human interaction comes with talking on the phone with an employee who is working from home because their office is closed to the public.

Our post office used to be a place where you’d see friends picking up their mail, giving you a chance to catch up on family news. It has become an uninviting place. All the indoor outgoing mail slots have been taped shut and mail must now be deposited in three new outdoor boxes. You now feel an urgency to get out of there.

At the grocery store, because of state guidelines, you become a click as you’re counted off and admitted to the store. Once inside, because of all the masks, it looks like a reunion of Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid’s gang, preparing to pull off an old-fashioned robbery.

You’re quickly shamed if you go the wrong way in the green and red directional aisles or if your mask isn’t fitted just perfectly. It always amazes me how quickly once shrouded authoritarian behaviors can emerge during a crisis.

Shoppers are buzzing down the aisles, eyes straight ahead, concentrating on filling their carts to overflowing so they don’t have to come back next week. No idle chatter here. There might be a quick wave if you can recognize a face behind all the masks. Hurry, hurry, we have to get out of here. Look around when you’re there next time. You won’t any longer see any youngsters in those shopping carts.

When we finally cross over to the other side of this pandemic, our desire to reengage will win out, ending our isolation and the retreat from friends and neighbors. We know that we won’t be who we were before, because the cost paid in lives and broken dreams will have been too steep. Sadly, there will be some who will finish their lives continuing to shelter in place.

Handshakes and hugs will be on the outs, but we’ll continue to follow the good hygiene rules of hand washing and covering our sneezes, because the flu and other viruses will still be out there.

The fabric of our communities will emerge a little frayed and faded, but it will remain intact.

Tom Murphy is a retired history teacher and state representative. He is a Kennebunk Landing resident and can be reached at tsmurphy@myfairpoint.net.

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