The birthday week when reality crashed — and revived — because of COVID-19 pandemic | Opinion
This has been a week for remembering.
It was exactly one year ago this week that the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic hit most of us. Not unlike the memories of what we were doing the moment we learned about the 9/11 attacks, or for those of us a bit older the day JFK was shot in Dallas, this is the week that our reality crashed. Or, to put it another way, the week we realized that life as we knew it was over.
In the weeks leading up to mid- March last year, my wife and I had been busily planning my birthday party for March 14. It was to be a major blowout, with printed invitations and a hired bartender, for this was a truly Big Birthday. The Big 8-0.
We didn’t think too much of reports of major lockdowns in China in January as the virus spread from Wuhan. After all, China seemed always to be birthing new virus strains, but they stayed mostly in Asia, didn’t they? We perked up when western Europe started to shut down in February. And when the first cases began showing up in the U.S., we began to seriously worry about having 40-some people in our home eating, drinking, toasting, shaking hands, hugging. In the second week of March, as major sports leagues began canceling games, it became clear that we were going to have to pull the plug.
At noon on March 9, I let invitees know via email that, “In an abundance of caution and with great regret,” the party was called off. But it’s not canceled, I emphasized, just delayed. “This does NOT mean we won’t celebrate my birthday,” I assured my friends and relatives. “It just might be a bit later. Say, the Big 80.5 birthday. Now, that’s a novel idea. So, consider this a rain check for this event, maybe sometime in October, when the summer heat will hopefully have dissipated along with the virus.”
How naïve we were at that stage of the pandemic. Certainly it would be over by fall. Who could imagine being locked down for six whole months? Unthinkable. Indeed, theater companies quickly shuffled their schedules to reprogram for a summer season. Cruise-ship lines juggled itineraries for summer excursions. Travel agents shifted to booking summer trips.
Amid the panic of those early days when scientists were still trying to understand how the virus was transmitted and how it attacked, we realized that our world, already shrunk by issues related to aging – multiple doctor visits, night-driving difficulties, hearing impairment, mobility limitations – had gotten even smaller. No more theater or movie matinees. No early-bird dinners at favorite restaurants. No family celebrations of holidays and birthdays. Oh, we saw our grandchildren on occasion — brief gatherings on our patio, masked and socially distanced, with minimal refreshments. Our daughter, a staffer in public schools, was obsessed – properly so – about inadvertently transmitting the virus to her parents, as were we about doing the same to them.
We were forced to build a new reality in lockdown, and we decided it would be one of defiance – a determination to avoid the COVID deniers, anti-maskers and foolish young people with a false sense of immortality and to survive this pandemic to enjoy more years of life.
We acquired masks. We stockpiled toilet paper and frozen foods, making our first on-line grocery order and picking it up at curbside. We ordered our first takeout dinner to celebrate Easter – sans family. We learned to attend church services remotely, singing the hymns from our living room couch and tipping torn bits of leftover biscuits into a tiny cup of wine as we watched our pastor bless the elements of Communion on our computer screen. We even learned to set up Zoom social hours and shared drinks and laughs with friends, remotely.
Our home became both our prison and our refuge. Smallish and crowded with too much stuff, it generated monotony. Dust bunnies collected behind doors and beneath tables. Beds went unmade. Table-tops acquired a coating of dust. But at the same time, we came to appreciate its snug features, with enough rooms for one spouse to isolate in when the need to be alone arose. We especially appreciated the expansive glass walls and windows that flooded the house with light and views of nature in the commons area in back. The habits of the birds and squirrels that fought for access to the bird feeders became a daily source of wonder as we relaxed on the lanai. Why are those two squirrels always fighting? Wait, is that dove trying to break up the couple – or create a threesome?
Basically, we tried to make the best of it. While the cooler spring weather held, we reserved Fridays as Escape Days — a once-a-week commitment to avoid going stir-crazy by getting out of the house, safely. In doing so, we discovered — or, in some cases rediscovered – the natural treasures that Manatee and Sarasota counties have preserved for public enjoyment. It was a delight to walk the trails in Robinson Preserve, to hike through the woods of Emerson Point, to view the billboard-size art in Sarasota Bayfront Park, to scan trees for glimpses of an endangered bird at Nokomis Scrub Jay Park, to walk through a mangrove forest at Ken Thompson Park, to view spectacular gardens at Historic Spanish Point in Osprey and Selby Gardens in Sarasota.
After the Ken Thompson Park hike through mangroves, somewhere in mid-May, we decided to broaden our new reality to include outdoor dining, enjoying hot dogs and a beer on the breezy deck at the Old Salty Dog. We felt both elation and trepidation as we slathered on mustard and relish from individual packets of the condiments using disposable plastic utensils, noting approvingly the restaurant’s adherence to CDC guidelines discouraging use of common serving utensils. Furtively eating that lunch was akin to the way I felt using a fake ID to drink beer in Dallas honky-tonks in my college days: thrilled at getting away with rule-breaking but dreading the consequences of getting caught.
By June it became too hot and muggy for walks in the park. We looked into museum protocols and found that most were being very observant of health guidelines — and were virtually empty. So Friday excursions transitioned to weekly museum visits: the Bishop Museum and Planetarium in Bradenton, Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, James Museum of Western Art and Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, the Florida Aquarium and the Florida History Museum in Tampa. One day we set aside for a gallery walk in Sarasota, visiting eight of the top galleries — all virtually empty.
By mid-summer it was clear the virus was not going away soon — not even by Christmas. We found new ways to occupy the time, talking early-morning walks in the neighborhood before the heat set in, going through kitchen cupboards and closets to eliminate clutter, creating a digital photo album, re-reading old books and, for me, finally finishing writing a new one, my first.
Still, depression hovered on the edges of our lives as the weeks passed. Along with a constant state of ennui — What day of the week is it? Haven’t we already watched this movie? — there was a difficult-to-shake feeling of meaninglessness as the world stood still, month after month. That feeling arose early in the pandemic when certain political leaders suggested that health-compromised older folks like us should simply accept the reality of COVID infection and let less-vulnerable generations get on with life. The mishandling of the pandemic by the White House magnified our feeling of being throwaway seniors, standing in the way of reopening the economy.
The planned 80.5 birthday celebration passed without comment in October. But we hung in there, continuing to heed the CDC guidelines and avoiding the retailers and venues that ignored those guidelines. A new administration took over the White House and pandemic policy, immediately putting into effect strategies to knock down the infection rate. Declining hospital censuses and early success with vaccine trials brought a glimmer of hope.
Now, a year later, having been successfully vaccinated, we feel more confidence in taking up travel brochures to plan trips this summer. We are open to hosting in-home dinners with couples who also have been vaccinated. We even attended an open-air cocktail party at our community pool last week, masks removed but still socially distanced.
And I celebrated my Big 8-1, again without that huge party. Instead it was a small family gathering, still on the patio, still without food and drink. But the little party ended with an unexpected treat. As they were leaving, my daughter and grandson opened their arms for a real hug, not an air hug — still masked, of course — for the first time in a year. It was the best birthday present ever.
David Klement is former editorial page dditor of the Bradenton Herald who lives in Bradenton with his wife, Jo Anne, also a retired Bradenton Herald journalist. His recently published book, “Conscience of the Community: Memoir of a Small-Town Editor 1977-2007,” is available on Amazon.com.