FFF(c) Day! Freedom From Fear (coronavirus)
Scenes from World War I were playing on my screen recently. Soldiers were huddled in the trenches, with incoming artillery shells, mortar rounds and sniper fire. It was a constant battle just to remove the dead and injured from the live fire while shrapnel, mud, and debris rained all around them. Everyone wondered if they’d actually make it home alive, not to mention arrive physically unscathed. Unfortunately, many of those who arrived with bodies intact turned out to have “shell shock”, or what we now term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
It is estimated that 40 million people died worldwide in that war; so far, “only” about 2 million people have died from the quiet war of coronavirus. Without the explosions and bloody deaths as stark reminders of this war, many people saw little or no risk, and pretty much continued their lives as they had before they had to wear a mask to get their groceries. But for some of us – those with compromised immune systems or other pre-existing conditions – this felt like an invisible war that was being raged right next to us, and we retreated to our foxholes, shelters we shared with only those who lived in our homes. Anyone else could be an undercover agent carrying Covid-19; trust no one, no matter how much you love or miss them. It was a fast, brutal and stark reordering of priorities.
Every trip outside the home became an exercise in warfare and spycraft. Need to fill the gas tank? Find a deserted pump island. Oh no, here comes someone! Do they have a mask? Which way is the wind blowing? How close are they going to get? Want to take a walk and get some exercise? Oops, not there, look at all the cars in the parking lot. How many people are on that trail? Nope, let’s find a deserted neighborhood. Groceries? Order online, drive to the store, open the back hatch, put on a mask. What? Why are they trying to approach my window, I stated NO CONTACT! Get the groceries home, wipe down everything with disinfecting wipes, then wipe down the counter.
Order surgical masks, cloth masks, vented masks (oops, can’t wear that; glasses won’t fog, but my outgoing breath isn’t filtered, and that’s not cool). Order more masks. Get filters for masks. Order surgical gloves. Get an air purifier for household air (seemed like a good idea at the time, will come in handy during smoke season). Search and search for hand sanitizer, disinfecting spray and wipes. Order more masks, maybe these will work better. Take a chance and meet at a “social distance” with friends outdoors. On the way home, discuss whether I got closer than 6 – 10’ during the visit, and if so, how great was the risk of exposure.
One day – March 367th – get in line, and spend nearly two hours way too close to strangers, and get a shot in the arm that may be a first step in getting invisible body armor against this invisible assassin. Three weeks later, go back – where is everybody? – and get the second shot. Tomorrow, March 381st, marks FFF(c) day. We’ve been sent home from the front with a fully functioning body! But. We felt the tiniest shadow of what PTSD might feel like.
Long discussions. What can we REALLY do now? Who can we see safely? What does that look like? What does the CDC say? Hmm, lots of data there, and not a little confusing. Are they saying that to keep us safe, or the people we are with? What does 95% effective mean? Wait, now it’s “only” 90%? What about the variants, are we safe there? I feel like maybe a person emerging from a storm shelter after a tornado has just passed by, wondering if it’s safe to come out. Or maybe like a turtle who retreated to his shell because of an apparent threat, blinking his eyes, and slowly extending his head to take a look around. It’s going to take some time to stop examining every action outside of the cocoon we have built around our home.
We went a little crazy yesterday. We went to Costco … during the Senior Citizen hours to avoid crowds. We actually went a couple of months ago, double-masked, with our tight little list, only getting exactly what we needed, not going down any aisle with another person in it, and rushing out as soon as possible. This time – okay, still double masked – we go up and down dearly every aisle in the store. And yes, we found a few things we didn’t know we needed until we saw them.
We raced home (I was going to say zoomed, but that word has been co-opted by a now-ubiquitous app), put the groceries away, put on our hiking clothes, and headed out to Whistle Lake to hike a real trail! We took our masks, but only masked up if we saw others who were wearing a mask. It felt so good to not have to find a spot on the trail where we could be six feet or more off the trail, and not struggling to quickly put our masks on before they got too close. We even had two 5 minute friendships, the first in over a year!
And then (drum roll), Terri suggested we head in to Anacortes, and maybe find a restaurant with an outdoor patio where we could have a glass of wine. And we did! Anthony’s had two patios open, and the one in the sun didn’t even have anyone else on it. We ordered one of our favorite appetizers, Calamari, and a glass of wine, and marveled at where we were, and what we were doing.
Our guard is still up a bit. Still leery about being too close to unvaccinated people, dining inside a restaurant, and returning to in-person church services, to name a few. But now there is sooo much more we can do than we’ve able for the past year, it’s almost intoxicating. We’ve missed so very much this last year, and we ache to see our kids, grandkids and friends, but we survived. American could end up with three-quarters of a million dead before there is a near-zero risk of contracting covid, and our hearts break for those who have lost family and friends, and for those whose bodies will never fully recover from this disease. Yes, we took extreme measures; now all those sacrifices will begin to pay off as we reintegrate with society. The storm clouds are clearing, and we emerge, ready to build again.
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I Am Gray 