One year

This coronavirus pandemic is quite scary. I am wondering if we’ll have a completely virtual spring term. It seems likely at this point.

Personal journal entry, March 10, 2020.

Oh, 2020 me. How naive you were.

I blogged a few weeks back about the exhaustion and grief we’re collectively feeling as we approach the one year “anniversary of the pandemic.” The idea of a pandemic anniversary is interesting in and of itself, but I take it to mean the anniversary of the massive shutdowns in the US, when schools moved online and businesses closed down and events were canceled and you couldn’t find a roll of toilet paper or a container of bleach anywhere. So, early March.

When I wrote the post, I wondered how I would actually feel when the “anniversary” finally arrived. Would it be an emotional experience? Would I experience a wave of grief? Would I feel hopeless, sad, angry, pissed off? Or perhaps numb? And when, exactly, might these emotions hit?

I found some answers this past weekend, when I found myself continually going down the rabbit hole of replies to a simple tweet by NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro:

We all have #TheMoment when we knew things were going to be different. Where were you and what were you thinking a year ago? We are one year into this pandemic. Tell us @NPR @NPRWeekend

— Lulu NYT (@lourdesgnavarro) February 28, 2021

How I spent my Saturday night — and, er, more time on Sunday than I care to admit.

Reading the replies proved a surreal experience, transporting me right back to early March. Details I’d pushed out of my mind to make way for a survival mindset resurfaced:

• The discussions with my partner about whether, and how, to “stock up” for something like this. Did we even own bleach? What about Lysol? How much food do we have in the freezer and pantry?
• Thinking back to every sniffle and fever going back to December 2019 — had it already gone through our family? (Answer: no, since I’ve been repeatedly tested and have donated blood and nothing’s shown up.)
• The growing sense of unease about being out in public.
• Taking extra precautions with the snacks I brought in for the last day of class project showcase, and ransacking my office to find hand sanitizer (March 11).
• Wondering if the middle school musical (where elder kiddo had a one-line singing solo!) would go on as scheduled, and/or if the black belt midterm test slated that same weekend would still happen. (Answer: no to the musical, yes to the test.)
• The all-faculty meeting on March 12, the day after the last day of Winter Term classes, where we were all crowded together in one room to hear the announcement that we were moving to an online Spring Term. (And feeling increasingly uneasy about all being in the same room, unmasked and not distanced, during what was now clearly a pandemic.)
• The last time I ate in a restaurant — Friday, March 13, with the younger kiddo, after finishing the first part of our black belt midterm tests. (Pizza, ginormous homemade soft pretzel sticks, and probably root beer.)
• The moment the kids’ schools shut down for “extended spring break” (March 16) — and the realization that my professional and family roles would be tightly intertwined for the foreseeable future.

I certainly didn’t expect that we’d still be at home (largely), still not vaccinated, still with a pandemic raging. And, in some respects (I’m looking at you, Texas, and all the other states without mask mandates), in potentially worse straits. I didn’t know that my mood most days would still swing between numbness, despair, fury, exhaustion, and just a wee bit of hope.

But I also didn’t expect that I’d become reasonably competent in teaching online, and that I’d embrace certain aspects of that medium. I didn’t know that the pandemic would force me to reckon with almost everything I believed and thought I knew about grading and radically change how I evaluate student work. I didn’t think that our super active family would actually welcome the cessation of extracurriculars and embrace the concept of wide-open evenings and weekends spent together.

The answer to “how will I feel when the anniversary arrives?”, so far, is pretty much “the same way I feel most days during this pandemic”, with perhaps a growing sense of hope over everything else. Mixed, too, with a bit anxiety over what our new, post-pandemic normal will be.

What feelings are you experiencing as we hit the one year mark of the pandemic?