Pandemic Diary April 2020

Well, I haven't called any of the posts on this blog a pandemic diary but I suppose that is what they are.  My previous posts that addressed anything about what is going on here had to do with canned goods and recipes.

What has been affecting more of my friends, and lately, myself, however, is response to the isolation.  Most of my friends were teachers, about five of the seven women I see on a regular basis who are of the ten I have met up with sporadically.  I have the aforementioned seven regular friends whom I met with about once a week regularly over some years.  Then there were about ten friends (half of them teachers) that I met up with on a monthly basis.  And about 4 or 5 more individual friends whom I saw more seasonally, old childhood pals and friends from college.  My point here is that all of us were used to bing in relatively large social groups most of our adult lives every day.  We taught in schools.  My full time weekday job was in a school with 50 teachers, and 600 children, and my part-time Saturday job was in a lab school in a university with a dozen teachers and a couple hundred students. 

 Then, too for most of my life, I had brothers and sisters, parents, and a daughter, not to mention a decade and a half marriage and a few long term relationships after my daughter left home.  

So, this many weeks of ISOLATION is something new for me.  And for many of my friends in enforced isolation, so many of whom are single through divorce or widowhood, and have no children or grown children.  Since we all worked, few of us have had close neighborhood connections, and the ones I knew who did have that life style, like my cousin Patty, moved after the children left and their husbands died.  So we are really alone.

However, the two most isolated people I know are myself and my brother and he wins first place since he lives on a mountain in West Virginia, up a long dirt road, far from neighbors, and even further from any social groups like the VFW or the  local bar.  Like me, however, my brother lives with a dog and cats.  His two cats and his dog are rescued and they are his companions as are mine.  

You are never really alone if you have one animal companion or more, and what's more, they keep you on a schedule where if you ere totally alone, you might drift into some unknown state of mind where you lose track of days and who knows what else.

My dog has just gotten me to do our daily one mile walk, which I can assure you I wouldn't have done most days this winter without her nagging.  And the animals keep me on a routine.  Every morning the dog must go out, the cats must be fed, which gets me to get out of bed, eat my breakfast, and then the dog demands her walk, which gets me washed and dressed and into shoes and a jacket and out the door.  

Each day during the quarantine, when we have walked, I have been grateful, as I so often am, for the beauty of nature even in an ordinary neighborhood walk.  I feel greeted by the yellow smiling daffodils, and I admire the shy little purple wildflowers in the yards and along the fences.  I don't know what they are and they probably don't know what I am but we greet one another in our shared existence under the sun.  Today, a profusion of little shiny yellow flowers made a chorus of hello along the borders and in friendly accessory to the showier daffodils.  Always there are the dandelions, those bright, friendly buttery little faces, those umbrellas of sunshine polka dotting the green grass, which after all our spring rain in March is vigorous and shining and new.  

Today I took photographs of some of the wild flowers that share my neighborhood and I will post them to cheer us all up.  I also saw a lot more people out than usual too - bicycles (what a good way to get out and about without putting yourself or anyone else in danger.
Lots more dog walkers than usual, and the usual worker bees mowing and power washing, but more people sitting on the porch than usual as well.  After I finish this post I may take a cup of coffee and go sit on the porch too - the Sunday New York Times can wait, Spring beckons!

Happy Trails!  Stay Well and good luck!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com