It seems hard to believe that just a year ago life seemed normal. Though the corona virus had been discovered early on in the year, it wasn't declared a pandemic until mid-March 2020 and it was then the shelter-in-place orders began. So it seems hard to remember that people were doing what many felt to be normal up until that point. I for one, was going to work and we were doing our usual activities. And I was going to the library whenever I felt up to doing so. I didn't get to any theatrical movies during January and February last year, but I did get to see a play put on in February by our county stage company. It was California Suite and it ended up being the only one they were able to put on. They had already cast their next play. Beauty and the Beast Jr., that was to be performed in the spring.
When March began, I was still doing the usual stuff. On the very first day of the month, I saw a poster downtown advertising the upcoming high school play, Grease. I then planned to go and see it. We'd been doing the usual stuff at work, including cooking, the last class of which occurred on March 11. Very few people showed up that day, seemingly worried about the corona virus. That same week, on Friday the 13th, I went to return the books I had out from the library, without taking anymore out. I had no clue this would be such good timing--the library stayed open the rest of that weekend, then closed down the following Monday, March 16, which was also the last day of the usual activities at the center. The youth group that uses the same building had already cancelled their activities, so it seemed inevitable that our group would be cancelled as well. So began two long months of no seeing other mental health clients for activities (we resumed in June). The writers lab went to Zoom, which I gave up on after one to two tries.
The first two times going to the store store were anxiety-producing, a feeling I kept getting as the pandemic raged on. One such trip occurred on Friday the 13th. Not too many people made note of the fact that the superstitious date coincided with the start of the quarantine. And this was when the stores were stripped clean of toilet paper, something that still doesn't make any sense to this day. Pasta was out for a while too. I had never seen such empty store shelves until then.
How many of you can remember what they were doing a year ago at this time? Nearly all of 2020 was spent in quarantine.
