Well, I didn’t really skip skip…and it’s only when I was leaving that I realized that some kind of burden had been lifted from me.
A lady was smiling, opening her Explorer door after loading her groceries. She was wearing her mask on her chin, so I know she had been wearing it and was happy to take it off when she got outside. And she was smiling. I smiled back. She saw me, even though my mask that was still on my face. That’s the thing about eyes. They are the first thing to smile. My hubby knew that.
I had selected a light pink “Knockout Rose” bush from their outside display. Then a mint plant. Then some basic groceries. An English cucumber, lettuce, a jar of apricot jam that claims to be “75 percent apricot” and which comes from Germany. Three bottles of spring water.
I browsed the meat section and got some bone-in chicken thighs for .75 per pound. The skin is still on. I will remove that. I’m cooking the basic tomato sauce that my hubby taught me. My cat is watching. I don’t know why. She doesn’t — won’t — eat people food, but she likes to watch me cook.
Back to the skipping at Lidl idea. I also bought two small containers of blackberries. I just ate three. They are the best blackberries I have ever tasted. That’s saying a lot, because my sister and I used to pick luscious ones right off the briars. We arrived home with purple-stained mouths and fingers, and enough blackberries for the family dessert.
A woman had followed me down one of the aisles at Lidl and asked me where I got the pink rose bush. She called her husband who was at Lowes looking for knockout rose bushes. They are $9.99 at Lidl and much more expensive at Lowes. He came to Lidl. They bought three. I stuck with one because I really don’t like knockout roses. It’s just that I have to get in the habit of digging the ground and planting things again. Why haven’t I done it in this past year when I’ve not gone anywhere? Good question.
I think I was the second person seen wearing a mask to go to the grocery store in preparation for the so-called “shutdown.” If I had been out of paper towels, or toilet paper, or some kind of cleaning supplies, I would have been more worried, because those aisles had been stripped bare. I was stocking up on fresh produce, tea, and cookies.
My sister had arrived the day that the shutdown was announced, and we went grocery shopping together. She wore a mask too. We used self-check and got out of there pretty quickly.
My sister and I went for groceries every ten days or so. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been. We bought far too many treats, and we ate most of them. I stocked up on frozen spinach, Brussels sprouts, and mixed vegetables. I have begun eating those now that I’m pretty sure vegetables will not be a problem to get.
Something happened on April 30, 2021. I got my second dose of vaccine. I spent the next day with a migraine. I didn’t think of traveling right away, or doing anything different, really. I’m aware of the advice to still be careful.
But today I realized that I no longer feel…insecure. That’s why I felt like skipping.
We who follow the current medical advice have gotten a lot of flack for “living in fear,” for being sheep, for not thinking for ourselves. Let me just say, that I was not fearful of the virus for my own sake. I visualized people with compromised immune systems, who had to be protected from transmission by their loved ones. Loved ones who might not even be aware that they had been infected while out and about doing necessary errands. We all had parts to play in this invisible chain of transmission.
Someone should have compared the virus transmission to Truman’s “the buck stops here.” Stop yourself from getting infected, and that stops the next guy from getting infected. You have to care in order to think that way.
I’ve been in the position of “caregiver” several times in my life. Most recently my late husband had developed leukemia. We stopped eating his favorite romaine lettuce because of the infectious outbreaks associated with it. We made sure our chicken and our meats and our eggs were cooked to temperature. We didn’t eat leftovers. Had this pandemic happened while he was still alive, I would have been living in fear. Fear of bringing the virus back to him. That’s fear on top of fear.
But no, living in fear is not really an accurate descriptor for how I have lived through the pandemic thus far. I have had an unease. The word “insecure” occurred to me as I was loading my groceries in the Lidl parking lot. I felt that way after my hubby died and I was on my own. It’s more like that feeling. Not knowing if life as we knew it will ever return. Not knowing if society is going to hold together. Not knowing why a big percentage of my fellow citizens don’t care whether the vulnerable among us dies. It’s a hard pill to swallow.
It’s been a year of learning what our society really is. I don’t like what I’ve learned. But I am happy anyway.
