Great Pause #2
It was a new world I came home to on March 24. The airports were nearly empty. This time, no restaurants or bars were open, and very few shops. I didn’t anticipate the restaurant closures, so Hudson News provided my fine dining experience. Once seated for my flight, I wiped down my seat area (including the window and wall!) thoroughly with a handful of sanitizing wipes. The young couple behind me traveling with their toddler offered me a surgical mask as they watched me “clean house.” They had six, she said. Kindness continues even in the scariest of times.
The day-to-day of staying inside didn’t seem too terribly difficult. At first. An introvert, I feel inordinately qualified to spend long hours alone. I had books to read. Coffee at the ready. Needlework on hand. Closets to organize, after all. When (and if!) the weather turned nice, I would clear my perennial beds and transplant my peonies and the hydrangea bush.
And I did all those things that first week of the Great Pause–with enthusiasm and a sense of we’re-in-this-together. But what I didn’t expect was the gloom that soon settled over me. The dread of getting sick. Wondering if at that very moment the virus was multiplying inside me, every cough, headache, or muscle ache signaling “it” had arrived. Add to that the fact that my husband hadn’t worked in a weeks, so bills were mounting with no end in sight. (Promises of our stimulus check, unemployment, and SBA loans are bogged down in a queue with millions of others who are suddenly out of work.)
There were even some tears to accompany those fears.
But it’s amazing what we humans can get used to and two weeks later this all feels so. very. normal.
This is my symphony 