How you doing?
No, how are you really doing, post pandemic? We’ve come a long way since 2019, with so much progress in vaccines and treatment, for those of us who believe in science, anyway. A few weeks ago, I got my updated COVID shot, followed by the RSV (I keep wanting to call it RSVP), pneumococcal pneumonia, and the “senior” flu vaccine. I feel like a pincushion.
Good Changes
Remembering the start of the pandemic made me think about the changes in my everyday life since then:
- I still buy way more toilet paper and eggs than we need.
- Neither my husband nor I run out to the grocery store to grab just one thing anymore. We ask: Can we do without for a few days? What’s in the freezer? Eat that first.
- I consolidate as many errands that I can into one trip.
- We got a pandemic puppy, so I walk every day, rain or snow. It’s not as if we hadn’t wanted another dog–we’d toyed with getting a second corgi for years, and well, since we were home anyway…
- I still call my brother weekly, something I began doing at the start of the pandemic. My husband also calls his sisters and brother weekly, too. A good habit to keep.
- I continue to workout at home, even though my gym reopened long ago.
- I still write monthly messages on my chalkboard for my neighbors. Those who pass our house (walking their pandemic puppies) tell me they look forward to them.
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Creativity, when there’s nothing else
I remember my anxiety was sky high then. Yet for many of us, the pandemic was also a time of heightened creativity. I know of several writers who started and finished manuscripts, such as Lisa Peers, who just released her novel Love at 350°. I wrote, illustrated and released a children’s book, Gordy and the Ghost Crab, and a chapbook, Sleepwalker, that was published this year by Finishing Line Press. Fellow poets wrote pandemic poems. I wrote just one, published in Paterson Review:
SHELTER IN PLACE
Last week police taped off the playground.
Paterson Literary Review, Issue 49, 2021
Storefront signs read Closed Today. Heavy
rain washes hearts, flowers and rainbows
chalked by children on sidewalks.
Don dresses in rain pants and yellow slicker.
Goodbye dear, have fun. We walk separately.
I wave from the window, glad I have
him, glad he’s going. I look for the
cat, squirrels, birds at the feeder
this wet afternoon. I talk on the phone
over an hour to my brother, a luxurious
idle conversation instead of say-
what-you-want-and-get-off.
We discuss hoarding, possible reasons
our late mother loathed Frank from
American Pickers, our cholesterol
levels, the toilet paper shortage and
the ranch house we grew up in, hip in
the sixties, small by today’s standards.
I remember talking for hours to my
girlfriends in that house, lying on my bed
staring at the ceiling, twirling my hair
around and around my finger. No worries
no desires other than getting a car,
one day driving cross-country.
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It was a strange, strange time, no matter what your stance is/was on shutdowns, mask wearing or vaccines. We saw a rise in anti-science and quack cures. Bleach injections and horse dewormer. A plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor. Fist fights on airplanes. “Don’t tread on me.” Vaccine requirements at events. N-95 vs hand-made masks. A mask display at Target trashed. Zoom meetings and work at home. Jobs lost. Long COVID. Way too many lives lost. For us survivors, life, friendship and family are that more precious.
And here we are with an updated vaccine. So, in what ways have you changed? Did you start something during the pandemic that you still do today?
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Thank you for visiting!
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist:
Multi-finalist award winning novel: In the Context of Love
Picture book: Gordy and the Ghost Crab
Poetry chapbook: Sleepwalker
Connect with Linda: LinkTree
