This week seems to have set people everywhere thinking about an anniversary that comes mid-March if not on the exact same day for everybody. One news group even suggested sharing the last photo taken before Covid confinement began. The one at the beginning of this blog was mine and pictures the view out the window of my quarantine. It doesn’t exactly inspire pity, and I would agree that we have been confined in a beautiful place. I do notice that the leaves were greener last year. Surely, Covid has not affected them!
Al and I left our house on March 16, 2020 with grudging permission from the pair of keepers next-door under strict instructions to use only our own pens, slater on the hand-sanitizer at every juncture, and wear masks. One of those keepers, who also happens to be our youngest son, had already been over with his math statistics to show us the likelihood of his children losing a grandparent if we did not toe the line. This necessary event to sign the papers selling our old house would be our last before quarantine. We thought we were looking at several months. Little did we know!
Perhaps before I go farther, I need to explain the term “keeper.” I use it more in the light of Cain’s reluctant question when he was asked what happened to Abel, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” than in the idea of a keeper of a jail or a zoo. In this case, the “Am I the grandparents’ keeper?” was answered positively and willingly as library, post office, and grocery trips were taken to keep us confined to quarters. Perhaps even more important to our mental health has been the keepers’ giving of haircuts!
My haircut for mental stability has been followed closely by the twenty-eight 1,000-piece crossword puzzles I’ve put together. Normally, I do one for each holiday, but this year I figured I owed it to myself to have one going all the time. Zoom meetings have kept me in touch with my Sunday school class and my writing critique group on a regular basis. Big events like the SCBWI summer and winter conferences, Highlights Foundation workshops, and the Faye B. Kaigler Book Festival have found a way to meet online as well.
We’ve been out for dental and absolutely necessary doctor appointments, since the keepers couldn’t figure out how to do those for us, but postponed anything that could wait. As this first anniversary arrives, the pitch dark at the end of the tunnel has taken on a grayish cast. We are both past our two weeks since the second vaccine (Pfizer, for the curious). Three vaccines are now available for the general public. The death graphs that had been spiking are going down along with nursing home stats. How I look forward to the time when we will ask, “Do you remember the Covid Epidemic?”