by Joann Kimberly Zerna
There was a time when ‘until further notice’ sounded almost comforting.
It appeared beneath suspension announcements and school advisories, tucked neatly into official statements that promised nothing except that life would continue later. Later felt close enough to trust. At first, two weeks sounded almost exciting. Group chats filled with jokes about cancelled quizzes and unexpected vacations. School uniforms hung behind bedroom doors. Students told one another they would be back before the lesson plans gathered dust. No one imagined those two weeks would become two years.
The days settled into routines that carried the weight of waiting.
Mornings began before sunrise, with the glow of laptops spilling across dining tables turned into classrooms, while electric fans hummed louder than teacher’s voices. Thirty tiny squares stared back from the screen, each holding a different bedroom, a different background, a different version of the same ordinary day. Someone asked, “Can you hear me?” Someone else forgot they were still muted.
By afternoon, the kitchen smelled of instant coffee and caramelized sugar. Spoons scraped against ceramic mugs until wrists ached, chasing the soft foam of dalgona coffee.It rarely tasted as extraordinary as it looked online, but for a little while, every whipped cup and carefully framed photo made it feel as though we were participating in the same afternoon, even from different homes.
Elsewhere, living rooms became studios: ring lights against textbooks, clothes on cabinet doors, phones on shoe boxes, and a held breath before the screen went live.
Comments flooded in —“Mine, 150!” “Claimed!” “PM sent.”—faster than anyone could read them. But behind every cheerful bid were groceries that still needed buying, tuition that refused to wait, and electricity bills folded beneath the television remote.
Birthdays learned new addresses.
A cake waited patiently in front of a webcam while familiar faces flickered into view. Someone’s connection froze with their mouth still open in laughter. Another voice arrived two seconds late. The birthday song broke across the unstable internet, never finding a rhythm everyone could share. The candles melted anyway. The wish was made anyway.
Outside, rain gathered over tin roofs, pounding enough to drown out conversation. Before pulling the curtains aside, a hand reached for a phone, refreshing the school’s page repeatedly.
Not to see the weather.
To see whether tomorrow has changed again. Another suspension. Another announcement. Another reminder that plans had become temporary things. Slowly, settled quietly into everyday life, until checking for announcements became as ordinary as checking the forecast.
Waiting had quietly become a habit.
The announcements became less frequent. The headlines changed. The banners disappeared.
The habits did not.
A face mask still waits beneath old receipts inside a backpack, kept there almost without thinking. Important files are saved twice because unstable internet once taught us how quickly work could disappear. Rain still pulls a hand to the phone before it remembers the window. Some lessons outlived the pandemic.
Nobody announced the closing of the version of school we grew up with.
There was no ceremony. No final bell. No message saying it had already happened.
We kept waiting for life to return to normal.
By the time it did, normal already learned a new name.
Some announcements do not end when they disappear from bulletin boards. They linger in the habits we no longer notice. School years eventually ended, but the people who waited beneath those announcements carried them forward.
