13. PANDEMIC MEMORIES I

As time and a shot of vaccine pulls me further from the profound experiences of this past year, I am compelled to force myself to recall a few of the little details so the experience is not lost. Not far from now I suspect this will be a hazy memory, just a translucent halo around the lives of we who lived it and lived through it. By recording details we preserve the memory.

The Covid 19 Pandemic hit the American shores roughly a year ago, though at this time last year I was naïve to what was ahead. By late March of last year we  in America were asked to shelter in place. I had never really known that term before. The virus was a huge unknown. We did not know exactly how it evolved, or how it was transmitted. We were asked to stay home, venturing out only for food and medicine. My performance gigs were all cancelled. My guitar classes ceased. Dave’s courthouse closed down. Our kids and grands’ schools closed, and eventually went online. We all went online. I knew then that if anyone wanted to paralyze humankind they would fry computers and cell phones, because they were our link to each other, and without each other we would wither and die.

I realize today that I have developed addictive habits around my devices. I think the weakness was easily and innocently nurtured when I started missing people. Human interaction. I see now, as we have the glimmer of hope that things will start to open up soon, that I need to step back from my constant desire to check in on social media. Good to know. But boy, am I grateful I had this inter-net to catch me during the pandemic. 

During the first portion of the pandemic we all panicked about “next week”. We rushed to buy daily needs, like soap and sanitizer and toilet paper. Toilet paper was a serious black market item. Even this past Christmas, nine months after the “rush”, we received toilet paper as holiday token gifts from half a dozen neighbors. If we did venture out to the store, we came home and piece by piece sanitized our purchases before bringing them into the house. I even wiped down my bananas and oranges. We all chose songs to hum in our heads to make sure we washed our hands long and hard enough, multiple times a day. At one point we even showered and put our clothing in the wash after venturing out. This was because we did not understand the nature of transmission, and people were getting so sick, in massive numbers, overcrowding the hospitals and morgues. It became impossible to find sanitizing wipes. We resorted to making out own, if you could find alcohol and aloe. In relief Society our presidency made our own concoction of rubbing alcohol, aloe vera and DoTerra essential oils, poured them in spray bottles into which we had inserted little clear tabs that read “Clean Hands & a Pure Heart”. We gave these as Birthday gifts, along with face masks. Masks and sanitizer were, at the time, hard to find.

Many people took to trying to pass the time at home by binge watching television, or putting together jigsaw puzzles. I joined many who started baking artisan bread. I ran out of flour, and it was hard to find on store shelves. I finally found someone on an online classifieds site that was closing his restaurant down because he could not afford to keep going during the shut down, so he was selling his supplied. We met in a parking lot in West Valley City and I bought 200 lbs of flour and 10 lbs of yeast from the back of his pickup truck.

I spent many, many hours in my garage making sacrament sets. I’ll write a separate post about that. I sewed masks on my sweet little Bernina sewing machine at the kitchen table. 

Many people organized their houses and cupboards. I just made more creative messes. We all have our own ways of dealing with stuff.

We all became users of internet group meeting apps like Zoom and Webex. Church was cancelled altogether at first. This is why I started making and giving away Sacrament sets. We performed holy ordinances in our own homes. Then eventually we began being able to attend church meetings virtually, later in the summer. We still have them online, almost one year later, though now they have opened the chapel to a maximum of around a hundred live participants, with families spaced at least six feet apart from each other. Everyone wears masks, and the chapel is  sanitized between meetings. The podium is sanitized between speakers, and they do not allow musical solos in our ward. I miss music in church. We sing hymns, without hymnbooks, through our masks, and it sounds like muffled prayers. The Deacons serve the sacrament to those in attendance with careful distancing and not passing the trays person to person. If you attend in person you lift your mask only to put the piece of bread in your mouth or to sip the cup. Before they pick up the sacrament trays each Deacon sanitizes his hands. We hold sacrament meeting and broadcast it over the web so those at home may participate, but the sacrament is done privately and not over the internet. So we usually have our own little sacrament service with my sisters Libby, Sherry and Ann Marie and AM’s husband, Michael at one of our houses We live within walking distance of each other and consider ourselves our safe cluster.

Kate came home for months during the pandemic, doing her doctoral work online. Ann Marie and Mike’s sons and their families both came and spent weeks with them, because they were able to work remotely. We visited our cottage this summer because everyone was able to work remotely, and we were able to isolate on our private beach. It was divine. 

Schools shut down, went virtual, tried to open, ended up with outbreaks and shut down again. This pattern continues to repeat. Suicides have risen many-fold. Mental health issues are rising to the surface. It’s a good thing winter is winding down in our spot on earth because we need to break out and get some sunshine! 

Coronavirus deaths to date: 2,572,193