One Year

This is the week, isn’t it? This is the week when everyone in the United States is looking at their calendars and remembering the last restaurant meal that they ate, the last public event that they attended, the last party or gathering, the last haircut, the last whatever until the country ground to a halt. Everything is reminding me of last year at this time. The sun is in the same position in the sky and the same distance from the earth and the days and nights are the same length, and the birds are singing the same songs and the grass is just starting to turn green and the forsythia are just starting to bloom the tiniest bit. 

And 2021 has also been an eventful year: an insurrection, a new President inaugurated, an old President on trial, a mass vaccination campaign, and a momentous anniversary, all in just two-plus months. It’s a lot to take in. Is there such a thing as TSD? Just Traumatic Stress Disorder, without the “Post-” part? Because that’s what this feels like sometimes. 

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Today is Friday March 12. I always think of March 13, 2020 as Day 1, which means that today is Day 365.

March 13, 2020 was also a Friday. We all went about our normal business, knowing that it was the last day of our usual, normal life, but not knowing what that really meant. The announcement that schools would close for two weeks had been made the previous day, but students were permitted to come to school on Friday to pick up their belongings and check in with their teachers. I went to work not knowing for sure how or even if we would be working the following Monday. I'm a contractor, and it seemed possible and even likely that our government agency would suspend contract performance until the shutdown ended. Thankfully, they didn't, and we were all told to begin working remotely on Monday. We’ve been doing that ever since. 

My older son is a student at our local community college and a lifeguard at an indoor pool. He worked that Friday night because he always worked on Friday nights, and when he went to work at 4 o’clock or so that day, no decision had been made regarding pools and parks and recreational facilities. But by the end of the day, the county had decided that all of those things had to close, too. The pool remained open until 10 that evening, and then the lifeguards went home for what they thought would be the next two weeks and what turned out to be the next three months. 

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. The doctor’s office is next door to the restaurant where my younger son and I picked up takeout that night. He and I always had dinner together, usually at a restaurant, but sometimes takeout eaten in front of a movie or a Capitals game, on Friday nights because my husband and older son were always at work until late on Friday. I thought about those Fridays as I drove past the restaurant to my appointment. My younger son is popular, and he’s never short of social opportunities, but he chose to spend almost every Friday evening of his freshman year in high school hanging out with his mother. Even as I lived those Friday nights, I knew that they were a gift to treasure. I’m glad I knew that then. Everyone’s schedule has changed. Everything has changed, period. We might not have another Friday night like that, ever again. 

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Now it's Saturday, March 13, 2021, meaning that we are officially entering year 2. It’s a sunny, bright March day, just like last March 13, 2020. The sun and the birds and the grass and the flowers--blah blah blah, all just like last year, like every other early spring. 

*****

It’s Sunday now, March 14: Year 2, Day 2. Yesterday was a typical pandemic Saturday; pleasant enough, but slightly sad. I ran errands, I did household stuff, I did this and that; nothing memorable. At 4:30 or so, the sunlight shifted and turned golden as it does toward the end of the day, forming geometric shapes, intersected with shadows, on the rug and the wall and the furniture. I wanted to go for a walk, but I didn’t want to leave my family room because I didn’t want to miss that light. It only comes once a day, and only on the right days. 

People were out and about yesterday. It felt like the world was opening up again, returning to normal. And it is. And that’s good. How could it be anything other than good? Why would anyone dread the thing that she’s looked forward to for a year? Who would do that? 

This is what happens. A person spends months thinking that she can’t live this way anymore, and then she gradually comes to realize that she doesn’t know how to live the old way anymore. I forget what it’s like to get out of the house at a set time every morning. I forget what it’s like to drive in traffic. I forget what it’s like to see people without their faces covered. I forget what it’s like not to think about what’s normal or not, and what it’s like not to think about life as a series of events before and after a huge cataclysmic change. I’m afraid that I’ve gotten far too good at living in this smaller and more circumscribed way, and that I won’t be any good at the old way. 

Normally, I’d chalk this up to me just being me. Low-level dread is my default state. But I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way. I think that we all have some kind of re-entry fear. I think that we’re all a little anxious. It’s been a long time. It’s been one year.