Apr

1

It won’t always be like this

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SCHOOLS LIKELY CLOSED FOR REST OF YEAR, trumpeted the headline on our local paper this morning, right under OFFICIALS SAY WORST IS YET TO COME.

Well. At least it isn’t March anymore, so we’ve all got that going for us.

Here in Oregon we have an executive order to stay home whenever possible (“Stay Home, Save Lives”) along with some specific restrictions which have increased as the days go by: first it was gatherings of no more than 250, then 25 or more, etc. Now it’s all gatherings of any kind unless a six-foot distance between people can be maintained. Restaurants and bars were limited to takeout and delivery right away, then all “non-essential” businesses were closed (amusingly, cannabis stores are apparently considered essential). Playgrounds were open for a while, but are now closed and/or covered in warning tape. Campgrounds are closed as well as state parks, along with a ton of hiking trails and day use areas.

The only place I’ve been recently is the grocery store, which has become both an exotic destination (“Ooh, something to look at other than my living room!”) and a big fat bummer. Tape on the floor to keep carts apart, masks everywhere, people giving each other suspicious looks and crossing aisles to increase distance. A forever-empty shelf where toilet paper and paper towels once were.

It’s all a blur at this point but I think the day our family officially began some form of quarantine was March 15. That was back in the disbelief stage, when I couldn’t get my head around the fact that four days beforehand my friend and I had still been dithering about whether to cancel our weekend trip to San Francisco and sending each other menus from restaurants we wanted to try. We were so close to not canceling, which of course seems crazy in retrospect but it just felt like such an unlikely risk at the time — which was right before things started to change so insanely quickly on what seemed like an hour-by-hour basis.

So I guess we’ve been in lockdown for about two and a half weeks now, which is at least marginally helpful for me to focus on: sure, it feels like it’s been ten thousand years, but it hasn’t. This all sucks a whole lot, but it’s neither negotiable or impossible. We’ve been doing it, we’ll keep doing it, and it won’t always be like this.

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