Looking Back Five Years Ago

 

This week marked five years since the WHO declared the pandemic. I looked back at some of my writing at the time, my thoughts, my routines. How was I feeling then and what has changed since?

Here is something I wrote then about my daily early morning walks:

    I began to recognize the regular morning walkers on the trails in my neighbourhood. At first, the black woman in the baseball cap who frequented the same trails was just someone I saw often. Then, on the mornings I didn’t see her, I wondered where she was, if she was okay. We progressed from nodding to each other, to saying hello, to even a slight wave if we were on opposite sides of the street. All our gestures of acknowledgment were subdued and quiet. No loud, cheery hellos, no flamboyant hand-waving. We recognized the need for hush in the early morning hours.

This is in such stark contrast to the clamouring of voices we hear today. The world seems to have turned up its volume considerably. An online friend recently posted on social media that she is drawn to the calm, quiet people who form ripples instead of crashing waves. I am too. And it is scientifically proven that too much exposure to noise affects our health. Granted, they’re talking about noise pollution, the sounds of airplanes and cars and construction. But I would argue that the noise of too many people shouting over each other is equally disruptive to one’s health and state of mind.

Here's another of my pandemic walk observations:

Each morning as I walked, I noticed how we are creatures of habit. Not just the people who took the same route each morning, but also the creatures around us. The blackbird that sat on the same dead tree every day, screeching his song. The rabbit who nibbled on the same patch of grass. The mama duck who shepherded her ducklings along daily in the pond.  The two mourning doves who scuttled ahead of me every day on the same path.

I knew we humans were creatures of habit, but the animals around us were too. Maybe I was imagining the predictability of routines during a new time of fear and uncertainty, but maybe I was honing my observation skills. We all seek routines to bring us a sense of comfort and safety. And then we need to break out of them to feel a sense of adventure or the satisfaction of learning and exploring something new. But back in 2020 we were stuck in the same groove, over and over. Then we learned to make those patterns work for us. Here is something I observed about a young man who was making his lockdown work for him:

Heading down the path that led to the small wooded area that was the favourite part of my morning walk, before getting to the ponds where ducks and the occasional heron appeared, I looked to the right, past the fence, to the local school grounds with basketball hoops. Yes, there he was. The tall young teenager who was there every morning practising his basketball shots. He was good. He had all the moves. As I watched, he dribbled, bounced the ball behind his back from hand to hand. He twisted, he turned, lifted his hand in a graceful arc. Swish, into the net. No one to witness this precision, except me.

The first few times I saw him, I glanced over with annoyance at the loud rap music blasting from his phone. But then, day after day, I saw how dedicated he was, there every morning before seven o’clock, practising, practising, practising. I grew fond of him. I forgave him his terrible choice in music and wished I was a basketball scout who could go up to him and say, “Son, I’ve seen how dedicated you are. You’re good, you have what it takes. I’d like to give you an opportunity.”

Five years have gone by. I occasionally see that woman on a sidewalk, across the street, but we no longer wave to each other. Too much time has passed and we’ve lost that delicate connection. The teenager is now a young man somewhere, starting his own life. I hope he still loves basketball, still enjoys his own company alone with a ball and a hoop. And as for me? Five years can seem a long time and also just a blip. The pandemic took a lot from us, individually and as a society. For some of us, it gave us time to slow down and ponder how we wanted to spend our days. It opened up some creative outlets for me that I might never have explored had I not taken those daily early morning walks and slowed down enough to watch a pair of soft grey doves hopping ahead of me on the trail.

We make connections, we lose connections. We make gains, we lose pieces of ourselves. We create ripples that go out, and we never know if they reach someone. And they never know if their ripples touched us.

 

** RECENT READS:

I might be the last person to have never read Jodi Picoult. Well, I fixed that this week with WISH YOU WERE HERE.

It starts at the beginning of the pandemic, now FIVE YEARS ago!! Diana and her surgeon boyfriend, Finn, are planning a trip to the Galapagos when the pandemic is declared. Being a doctor, he must stay in NYC but urges her to go ahead (prepaid etc.). She arrives at a quiet island in the Galapagos and then everything is shut down. She is stranded there, going from tourist to living like a local resident.

I did not see the twist coming mid-way through the book. WHOA! I can say no more.

It was so interesting to revisit and read about the details of the pandemic coming in the form of emails from Finn to Diana, what medical staff had to go through, the sheer horror and exhaustion.

How have FIVE Years gone by already and how have we forgotten that we once thought it would bring us closer together, make society more compassionate, that we would go through the darkness together and surface into the light. Hooey! Here we are today, more divided than ever.

March 11 is when the pandemic was declared. This was an unplanned timely read and I will definitely be reading Picoult again.