The Princess and I at a recent Mill Mountain Theatre
production with a few other brave souls. 

A Kind of Covid Anniversary Is Upon Us

This is an easy-to-forget anniversary, one of a life-changing, society-defining event that I suspect our children and grandchildren will point to as important in their development. For them, it will equate to the way my generation points to Vietnam and equal rights and my parents looked back at World War II and the Depression.

Covid was just beginning two years ago when I was visiting my son's family in Waco, Texas. It was the most recent time I saw them face-to-face. I almost said "last time," but let's hope that's not the case.

The panic was beginning and I was seriously wondering how the hell I was going to get home. Waco, after all, is halfway across the country and a good half-day's flight--with stopovers--from Roanoke. I sat in the airport in Dallas, almost alone for a couple of hours for a connecting flight to Atlanta on a plane half-full. Nobody was wearing a mask and, of course, nobody had been vaccinated since the medicine had not been invented yet.

I wasn't so much scared of the mysterious Covid-19 as I was being stranded in Texas, unable to get home. I had no idea what was to come. Nobody else did, either. The Trump administration was telling us that the virus was simply a cold that a few people were getting and not to worry about it. Medical professionals were telling us the opposite: Covid-19 was dangerous and would kill a lot of us. The administration said it would be gone in a couple of weeks. The medical community said it could well be here for the long haul--meaning permanently.

I didn't know who to listen to. I wanted Trump to be right, but he was never right about anything, so I had to go with the medical experts. I made a mask out of a T-shirt and wore it in the Dallas airport, having no idea why or if it would make a difference.

In the intervening two years, I and we have learned a lot more. Almost a million of us have died. I suspect most of us have been directly affected by Covid in one way or another. My son's whole family got Covid about a year after I left and my daughter-in-law was gravely ill with it. Evan and the kids were either asymptomatic or had mild symptoms. I don't know what we could have done without Kara. She holds that family together like SuperGlue. 

I have friends and acquaintances who have lost loved ones and I know a great number of people who have been infected. So far, I've been lucky, if inconvenienced slightly.

In the past, this kind of crisis has brought Americans together. Think: 1918 Spanish Flu, polio, children's diseases, wars and a host of mysterious viruses that have killed us in large numbers. This one made us crazy--as if we weren't already--driving us apart even further with mandates for masks and vaccinations, which have ultimately reduced the number of cases and deaths dramatically. But people were opposed to the mandates, insisting that was an infringement on their rights.

Covid has made us a more lonely society because we've become necessarily isolated. It has made us comfortable in our homes, less sociable, more insulated, more partisan in our beliefs because we aren't talking to real people as much.

We've had to re-learn to work in many cases, sitting at our computers alone, wearing bedroom slippers and robes. (I don't do that because I am a writer and have been working this way for years. I get up and get dressed for work every morning, even though work is only 10 feet from my bed.) We communicate by "device," not by sitting across a desk or in a room together.

We are finally moving back toward being in small crowds. I have gone with dates of late to live theatre, opera, sports events, festivals. All of them have exercised caution, spaced seats and most have even required mask-wearing if indoors. The people at those events most often seemed relieved and delighted to break the spell of isolation. 

I went to one theatre event at Showtimers a few months ago that was held on the porch of the venue with people sitting in chairs on the grass. The play was written spontaneously and the actors got their first look at it when they performed. It was awful, but everybody loved the fact that it was done. It was almost a finger in the eye of Covid-19, a courageous and admirable effort, if not an artistic success. 

Today, there is much less immediate concern with Covid, especially since most of us have been vaccinated multiple times, are wearing masks and are still socially distancing most of the time. Cases are down dramatically and we are less concerned by Covid than what's next and whether Russia is getting ready to start a nuclear war in Eastern Europe.

As the weather warms, hope for solutions grow, but the war may well be the next Big Thing. And it could be the last one. But Covid has given us a night to remember.