A year in a Pandemic time

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the declaration of a global pandemic (a redundant description - pandemics are global by definition).  March 23 will mark the one year anniversary of when our office staff started working from home.  We went back to the office (with precautions we are still observing) a couple of months later, but knowing a year has passed has me remembering what the pandemic was like at the beginning.

It was a time of stress - of unknowing.  Something what would seem impossible one week would be the reality the next week.  It was a time of grief.  I grieved the things we lost - traveling, eating out, being with people, worshiping and studying together, going to conferences, watching Josh graduate.  I grieved the loss of who we were. 

It was a time of anxiety.  What was going to happen? Grocery stores were empty. The stock market plunged. People lost jobs.  Schools closed.  Everything happened so quickly and without any real predictability.  Who knew what would happen next?  No one could predict it.

I found that I couldn’t watch the news.  I physically could not stay in the room if the TV was broadcasting news.  My anxiety would shoot up, and I would have to get up, and leave.  I love to make cards, but I couldn’t sit down and make them.  There wasn’t enough leftover concentration or creativity for them.  I realized one day that I couldn’t pray - and I felt like I should be praying.  Couldn’t. The day I realized that I sat down and made a few simple cards, and it felt like prayer. 

Our office staff worked out a schedule so that one of us would go to the office each day.  On my days to go in, I noticed that there were many fewer cars on the road than usual.  There weren’t traffic jams and there were many fewer accidents.  The road to work felt eerie and strange, and I almost felt like I shouldn’t be out driving (even though we are considered an essential business). 

We hadn’t been in our office space very long when March came along.  We had been using it as a place of hospitality - three or four meetings or gatherings held there already - and when I went to work, by myself, in the days we were working from home, the office felt empty.  Quiet.  And so sad. Lonely.

The day after I started working from home, Steve started doing the same thing.  We set our office up in the family room (the back of the room was already an office space) and worked together. It was good to be together.  On Fridays we would go out, pick up lunch, and eat it in the car. 

There were daily zoom meetings, texts, and phone calls to try to stay connected as an office.  I didn’t feel as if I was getting as much done - I compared it to driving a car with a wagon wheel.  But I was busy all the time. 

We stopped worshiping at church and started attending online services.  The first time I watched one of the services, I cried.  Now it seems normal, and I don’t give it a second thought.

We tried to stay away from family. We went out every Saturday to get groceries for Mom so she wouldn’t have to (we still are).  We dropped off the groceries and tried to keep our distance.  The first meal we had together was on Mother’s Day - we brought in food and ate while socially distanced. 

Once the state parks opened back up, Steve and I started making day trips. We were very careful, eating in the car or outside, taking walks.  It felt wonderful to get away from the house.  In June, we took our first overnight trip to Canaan Valley.  We spent two nights at the resort, and took several long walks.  We did eat breakfast and dinner in the restaurant, and it was a little bit nerve wracking.  In July, we traveled to Alabama to help Josh move to Nevada. We drove across the country - over 20 states - and didn’t eat inside a restaurant one time.  It was a different way to travel.  In September, we spent a week at Caswell Beach - a much more empty place than our usual Myrtle Beach.  We cooked in the condo about half the time and picked up meals to eat in the condo the other half of the week.  An enjoyable but different kind of vacation.

I started a mask factory, using a pattern a crated from a mask Mom bought me whose fit I liked.  I now have a mask drawer, I’ve made so many.

I checked (and still check) daily infection rates in our state, the Rt values across the country (they’ve stopped measuring that now).  Now I watch vaccination rates.

I celebrated when Mom was able to get an appointment for a vaccination, and I drove her through yucky weather to get her second shot.  Steve and I were able to get appointments for vaccinations a week ago - our second shots are on Good Friday.  There is a wonderful relief to the vaccination.  I see hope as I watch people around me receive the vaccination, and watch infection rates drop.  I hope that soon we will be able to go to a movie without worry that we will catch a virus that will kill us.

Someone on TV the other day said that during this “Great Pause” we have stopped living.  For Steve and me, that isn’t true.  We haven’t lived the same as before, but we have found a way to enjoy life while doing different things than we used to.  We enjoyed picnics outside and walks through the woods, take-out and car travel.  As we enter post-emergency Covid times, we’ll keep some of those habits, I imagine.