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In March 2020, we really had no clue what was about to befall us.
Perhaps I’m a bit naïve, but I really thought the mountains would protect us from any outside harm. Like the Alleghenies served as some sort of guard that would turn away the coronavirus if it failed to say the correct password.
It happened so suddenly. One day everything just stopped. The world that we knew was charting a completely different course. Then dropped anchor and was frighteningly still.
On a gray day in late March, I drove to work in my 2001 Toyota Corolla. I feel like the car itself often serves as a buffer from the world around me. It comes from a time before smart phones and satellite radio. It has a cassette tape deck and a regular radio. The windows operate manually. It does not have a key fob for remote locking and unlocking. But it still gets me where I want to go and I am going to drive it until it is time for it to move on to that great parking garage in the sky.
I remember that day had a completely different feel to it. Normally Main Street is lined with parked cars on either side. But there were hardly any cars anywhere. The streets were nearly empty. Most of the shops were shut and the restaurants were dark. There was only one word on the State Theater’s marquee: closed.
No one was taking attendance at the schools because the students were all at home; the teachers and administrators as well. Only the hospital, the funeral homes and the supermarkets seemed to be in business. And over time they would find themselves very busy indeed.
It was the uncertainty at the beginning that was so maddening. It seemed the worldwide pandemic was either going to be an extinction level event or it would be over by September. The president was optimistic that the virus would be swept away by an Easter miracle.
At a time when people should have been coming together, we were being encouraged to keep apart. Keep 6 feet apart, we were told. No hugging, no touching, no contact whatsoever. We were masked as we shopped for groceries, which were in short supply. One day the toilet paper vanished from the shelves and took all the water with it. We were supposed to be washing our hands like physicians preparing for surgery, but hand sanitizers and hand soaps were scarce.
Foot patterns appeared on the floors of retail spaces. Walk this way, stay this distance from the person nearest to you. Don’t touch your face.
Nursing homes were on lockdown. No visitors were permitted. Loved ones died in hospitals surrounded by strangers swathed from head to toe in protective gear.
Weddings were postponed. Family gatherings were forbidden. Prom dresses had been purchased but that rite of passage was canceled that year. So was graduation.
Spring is usually a welcome respite from the winter, but the winter kept on going, even as the temperatures rose. Summer arrived but it didn’t seem like summer at all. The pools did not open. Kids accustomed to going to sleep away camps did their sleeping at home.
The majority of us wondered when things would be normal again, and feared that the world had been irrevocably changed. But eventually the shops reopened, the restaurants welcomed back employees and patrons, and toilet paper ceased being a black market item. The vaccine lessened the intensity of the virus. Kids went back to school after what must have seemed the longest winter break ever. The road ahead appeared to be a little less bleak.
Three years after COVID-19 entered our vernacular and our community, the virus still pops up here and there. It will continue to rear its germy head from time to time as it’s become endemic now. I feel there will never be a time when we won’t be encouraged to get boosted and get tested. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Covid tests show up at the Dollar Tree alongside the drug and pregnancy tests.
One thing’s for certain – you won’t catch me passing up a 10 for $10 sale on hand soap any time soon.
