Memories of coronavirus pandemic in NC in 1st year anniversary
On March 3, 2020, everyone was going about their lives in North Carolina when the state’s first COVID-19 case was announced, like a needle dropping on a spinning record.
Life didn’t immediately screech to a halt, but that came soon enough as students were sent home, businesses closed and we sheltered in place for first weeks, and then months.
A year later, we have slowly emerged to a world where we regularly wear masks in public, keep our distance from people and worry every time we cough.
The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun asked readers to tell us how COVID-19 has changed their lives, in ways both big and small.
Dozens of you sent in your reflections in the form of essays — and a few poems, too.
You wrote of learning new habits and routines, some you have kept as life creeps back to not yet normal. Sourdough bread, anyone?
You told stories of being alone, and how in some cases, that’s been OK.
But for some, the isolation has been overwhelming, especially when confronted with the loss of loved ones at the same time.
There’s a sense of cautious hope as the vaccine rolls out and there’s more comfort in venturing out (within reason). Soon, we might be able to hug one another again.
Here is a collection of submissions you sent us — a time capsule of sorts to capture and remember a year like no other.
A daily walk for a mental escape
As an empty-nester and a longtime working-from-home professional, my 9-to-5 life has changed very little — other than my husband also works from home now and boots me out of my own home office. Though to escape the doldrums early in the pandemic, I started a regimen of getting outside daily (or nightly) to exercise.
I’ve always been a fairly regular exerciser with a mix of outdoor and gym routines, but I find being outside now to be both the safest and a great mental escape. As my number of days started to build up, it became an obsession actually.
I am now at 358 consecutive days of outdoor exercise — also the amount of time North Carolina has been fighting the pandemic. Rain, sleet, snow, floods… I’m out there every day walking, biking, running, hiking and paddling.
I recognize that I am very fortunate to have this ability, and I sympathize with others who are not as fortunate. Through my social media posts, I now have people cheering me on and inquiring about my endeavors. Most ask if I have a goal in mind.
I didn’t start with a goal and I don’t intend to make one now. I just hope to inspire others to do the same, or at least to find some escape or relief from these challenging times.
— Debra Rezeli, Raleigh
A zone of ‘quiet separation’
As I write this Feb. 10, 2021 — on this 330th day of our lockdown — I have come to think of myself as a free-range chicken: access to outdoor spaces, free to soak in the sunlight, all as long as I don’t stray beyond the fence here at The Cedars of Chapel Hill retirement community.
We can even graze and peck if we want, but no need with a set menu. Even tofu is for us chickens. There’s a nice comforting sameness, where “what time?” becomes “what day”? Just that we can’t flock, and the six-foot social separation defies the intimacy we roosters used to crave.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first reported COVID-19 on Jan. 22, 2020. My dear wife of 55 years died the day before. So even before it began, I was condemned to an aloneness that would outlive this crisis. With isolation and the loss of part of me, I needed to search for something life-giving.
I’d been there before. After an all-consuming career, I landed on an island uninhabited by hobbies or other diversions. Ellie was at my side. I hiked a bit and read a little, but a year-and-a-half into retirement, I overheard her tell a friend, “I’m sure he’ll find his direction.”
Now I could hear her again: Use this zone of quiet separation to discover what you still need to do. Think of a legacy. When we moved here almost 25 years ago, I took some creative writing classes. The results lay dormant (like me) but re-reading the bits of my old story of hiking coast-to-coast across England (as printed in The News & Observer in 1970) inspired a reawakening.
I bore people with endless anecdotes. Why not write again? Why not bore grandchildren with them? So I began, and this is one of them.
— Bill George, Chapel Hill
Finding a new passion
At the start of COVID-19’s reign over the world, I discovered a new passion in cooking, which blossomed into nothing short of an obsession, thanks to copious amounts of free time and friends at my burger-flipping job that encouraged me to pursue one of the only things that made me happy at the time.
And I am ambitious. Always have been, always will be. So I got a job at the Second Empire Restaurant and Tavern — the City of Oaks’ culinary magnum opus, run by the genius Chef de Cuisine Daniel Schurr, or as I now know him: Chef.
And I worked. I worked and worked and worked while also trying to be done and over with my senior year of high school. Or at least all I thought was left of it because of the pandemic.
And I learned. And learned and learned and learned so much from Chef and his staff, soaking up every granule of wisdom they had to give me: the feel of the crystal kosher salt, the sound of a searing short rib, the taste of a properly seasoned vinaigrette, the smell of a bad product, and the sight of a beautifully plated dish.
But I also learned other things from myself. I learned that I’m 17 years old, and my career path doesn’t have a deadline. I learned that high school happens once, so I couldn’t keep on giving it up for the sake of my ambition. I learned that the past is memory, and the future is imagination, thus all that really matters is the present.
But in the end, I would never have learned any of these things if I had not gotten the job of my dreams. So I also learned that you have to go there to know there, but also to know yourself. This pandemic has changed my life by allowing me to appreciate the road I walk on now, and not the road that is behind or in front of me.
— Carson Cain, Willow Spring, 12th grade, West Johnston High School
A pandemic poem
All was going well, plans were in the fold
But then came the COVID and things were put on hold
Everything shut down in my great living place
Unless we were outdoors with six feet of space
I started to miss the grandkids and all their funny riddles
Watching sports with them and being the monkey in the middle
Oh yes, I could see them while staying in my room
But it’s just not the same when you’re on Skype or on Zoom
I run a veterans chorus and am in a doo-wop club
But we haven’t met to sing, and that’s been a bad rub
I’m online or with TV most of the days
And reading The N&O while staying in PJs
I can’t go to the barber, but don’t miss going there
I’m saving lots of money, and besides — I have no hair
It has been a bit boring, this current way of life
But I’m thankful to be sharing it with my beautiful, wonderful wife
Oh, I do get out shopping and walking quite a bit
But travel and vacations? Forget about it
I’m learning the ukulele, it has such wonderful sounds
Now if only I can stop adding all of these darn pounds
The stimulus gave money to help some to live
Though many don’t need it, so they looked where to give
We’ve been grateful with thanks to those on the front line
And now there is hope that the future will be fine
We’ll soon get together with kisses and hugs
And be happy again with smiles on our mugs
We can’t wait to get out to see friends and be seen
And to finally say so long to this lousy COVID-19.
— Joel Glassman, Cary
A memory of the pandemic in the form of a quilt
As my wife and I have been retired for several years, we have not had to face the challenges that those who work and have kids in school have had to face. Like others, we walk, read, Zoom and just try to keep healthy and away from the mainstream.
We also enjoy hobbies, and this is where the pandemic has increased our activities. My wife, Elaine, has made approximately 150 masks for family, friends and church. But she also enjoys quilting and has made some beautiful quilts during this time. One in particular stands out. It is a large quilt made with handkerchiefs that her mother received for her wedding in 1944. That was the custom for young brides then and her mother saved them.
This is a quilt that will be passed down some day to our kids, and it not only will be a memory of what their mother made during this difficult time, but will be made from something their grandmother received during World War II, another trying time.
Since retirement, I have enjoyed oil painting, and now, with the pandemic, my volume has definitely increased. I do smaller paintings, and at this point have made about 28 of them. After completion, on the back I put my name and date for family and friends. However, in addition I now add something else.
On each painting, after my name and date, I have printed the words “A pandemic painting” to remind myself and others of the time when it was completed. I look forward to the day when I can stop doing this.
— Fred Turner, Raleigh
Finding a father
During the pandemic, I gained a father but not in the usual way. My father died when I was 10 months old, the victim of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. All my life, I experienced a void, but I was an adult before I realized how much that void had shaped my life.
My father was a bridge builder, and he helped construct two bridges over the New River, one in Virginia and one in West Virginia. In 1930, my parents sojourned in Royal, West Virginia, now a coal mining ghost town, while he worked on the Prince Bridge in the Gorge. My mother, who was from a small town in central North Carolina, became very homesick, especially when she became pregnant.
My father left his beloved job to bring her home. Nine years later he died.
In my adult years, I visited the bridge often, touching the railings and wondering if he had touched them in the same places. Since I do not have a single memory of him, the bridge became a symbol of him, and the river represented the divide between this life and the eternity he was experiencing.
For years the story of my parents’ sojourn became romanticized in my mind, and during the pandemic, I wrote a novella based on their lives. I created the people he worked with in West Virginia, while including the few biographical facts I knew about him. I portrayed the love my parents had for each other while adding some conflict to heighten suspense.
As I wrote “A Bridge to my Father,” he became more and more visible, and at the end of the novella I felt I knew him intimately, that I could hear his voice, see his smile, feel his touch, and experience his love.
How has my life changed during the pandemic? I have found my father. He is now real to me, and I no longer feel the void. I will know him when I cross the great river.
— Sims Cheek Poindexter, Pittsboro
Depression, but hope, too
I am underwater. The sights and sounds of life happening above me are muffled and move along without me. Submerged in lake waters, I watch without feeling, casually floating, my limbs move aimlessly through the sunlit waters. I don’t make any forward progress of my own determination; I am suspended here in this watery world, interested only in the changing colors of light slicing through the green depths of the lake.
I swirl around slowly, entranced by my limbs moving through liquid color, my hair flowing around my face. I want to stay down here.
Somewhere people are living in their houses. They play games with their kids, watch shows on TV, participate in Zoom meetings, exercise, renovate home living spaces, and cook together. Somewhere people in houses have formed bubbles of safety with other houses of people, and they get together for games, meals and conversation.
Somewhere people are making lives better for others. They are donating food, collecting and delivering supplies, teaching children, cheering on nurses, making cards for seniors, and making contributions. And everywhere, these people celebrate their life successes on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.
When COVID-19 first entered our lives, I approached my role enthusiastically. I made inspirational lists of activities and self-care. I researched ways to volunteer from home. I hauled everyone out for walks and bike rides. I modeled keeping to a schedule and task completion. We did yard projects and home projects.
But as COVID became a part of our lives, I started projects that I never finished. I stopped volunteering. I escaped into the pages of books, sometimes for the day. I gave up on plans I had for my future. I started struggling on the surface of my life.
And instead of continuing to flounder on the surface, I chose to sink deep into the depths of the lake. It is quiet here without the sound of my splashing on the surface. Suspended in liquid color, I am weightless, no longer at odds with my body.
Emotionless, my eyes fill with lake water. I am drowning in all the tears that I have not cried. I gasp for breath.
My legs kick reflexively and suddenly I am in motion. Droplets of water stream down my torso and limbs. I burst through the lake surface into the sunlight and air.
And I remember how to swim. And even though the lake waters beg me to stay suspended in the green depths. I propel myself forward back into life.
— Nancy L. Stone, Holly Springs
Finding beauty in the storm
A pandemic in my lifetime? No way, I thought as the virus was predicted to hit the United States in March 2020. I had no idea how this would affect us all and considered it a brief glitch in our everyday lives.
My first cause for alarm was hearing on the radio that toilet paper was being bought out. That sounded so ridiculous, and I could not believe it until I made my next visit to the grocery store. I heard of cars being broken into in parking lots to get the toilet paper. I became a hoarder, too, shaking my head in disbelief and disgust.
The painful everyday news that followed intensified my emotional unrest and restlessness. Watching with disbelief that another 2,000 people died in just one day in my beloved America. Realizing that people were dying alone on a ventilator and fearing for my safety and those of my loved ones gripped me daily.
And to add distress to an already unstable situation, the political climate became unbearable, and every day ushered in more unspeakable events and acts of hate. How could this be my country?
As the months passed, I realized I had begun to circumvent some of my despair toward more self-awareness and mindfulness in my life. There really was beauty in the storm, and attention to the beauty became my focus.
The perfunctory morning walk with my dog took on more meaning as I ushered in this task with anticipation of what the sky would show me that morning and what sounds, smells and sights would flood me. My heart was full of joy in these moments, and I cultivated gratitude and compassion in all my daily tasks.
What could have been the beginning of despair and depression for me turned into a study in resilience. What we do with our obstacles and trepidation depends on our ability to transform reality. My reality showed me that I am not a pawn to adversity but a queen of figuring out how to overcome it.
— Polly Addison, Knightdale
Forced to cope with grief
During the pandemic, I have learned how to pass time peacefully and enjoyably alone. I lost my husband in February 2019, so was in the throes of mourning when the pandemic hit. I learned that being alone doesn’t equate with being lonely.
I miss my husband terribly, and as awful as this pandemic is, it has forced me to sit and acknowledge my grief. I believe it has helped me heal faster. And while I have always been empathetic, I feel more deeply for those losing their loved ones to COVID.
Together, we will make it through. Kindness helps the giver and the receiver.
— Barbara Gartland, Clayton
Focusing on one day at a time
I’m 67 years old with health conditions that put me at somewhat higher risk for severe illness from the coronavirus. So, when the pandemic hit, my husband and I were determined to stay home and be as careful as possible. We learned about curbside pickup, and our son brought us toilet paper, which was in short supply.
Also in the beginning, everyone needed masks, and few were available, so I got out my sewing machine, cut up old T-shirts, and made 50 masks for family and friends, working as fast as I could.
As time went on, I tried to stay involved with our community, participating in Zoom meetings, working on the election and so on. We were also lucky to join a quarantine “pod” with our adult kids (who work from home) and their young kids, who are all at home. We all avoid interacting with others, travel or other risky behaviors so we can safely spend time with each other.
The pandemic has helped me better accept the unpredictability of life, realize how much is out of our control, and to let go of worrying quite so much about the future, instead focusing on one day at a time. It has also made me more grateful than ever for all the good things in my life — a loving family, a comfortable home, good food on the table — and aware of how privileged I am compared to others.
The wrongness of that disparity saddens me, and I am also beyond grateful for all those who are fighting every day for equity and justice in our society moving forward.
— Susan Case, Durham
New appreciation for family
Because of COVID-19, I’ve been spending more time at home than ever. Though it has really made me long for the days when I could go out shopping, hiking or just sightseeing, it’s also given me lots of time to work on projects I previously didn’t have time for. I think I’ve written more during the pandemic than I ever have in the three years since I started taking writing seriously, and the same goes for the art I make.
COVID-19 also has changed my relationships with family. Interacting outside of the family is inadvisable, so I’ve been spending much more time with them, and even communicating with them more over texts and calls.
I especially feel like I’ve grown closer to my mother. Even though she’s an essential worker, we are now both home at the same time more often. She has introduced me to shows and movies she likes, and we’ve taken to sitting together in the evenings.
As a result, I’ve noticed is my vocabulary changing the more I spend time with her. Before this, I think I spoke more like my dad or my friends.
So if a cuss word or two slips out when I talk, don’t blame me — blame my mom.
—Abigail Carlson, Willow Spring
