A YEAR AGO

One year ago I drove to Hannaford’s, shopped every aisle and found every single item on my long list. I enjoyed a close tete-a-tete with a friend while assessing avocado ripeness. The happy checkout girl smiled and I remember wondering which toothpaste brand gave her such white teeth.

Today I wouldn’t know if she had purple teeth because she was wearing a mask.

Last October I drove several times each week to the Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Middle School to cheer granddaughter Maddie’s volleyball team. I sat with other parents and grandparents, squeezed cheek-to-jowl on hard gym benches, high-fiving every key point the team made. 

Last night I sat in front of my computer at my kitchen counter watching Maddie deliver “kills and spikes” on YouTube. Her high school streams the volleyball games.

I used to walk right into Shields Meats to purchase a ribeye or lamb chops. The other day I waited in line outside, in the rain, standing way apart from other customers, until I got the “okay” to come in because their max is two customers at a time.

Not so long ago Mr. Wonderful and I thought nothing of inviting four or five couples for lobster rolls or haddock chowder. Today we hope they’ll consider coming inside our home for nips and nibbles. When they do, we try to sit far apart — “socially distant,” as it were — which is an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one.

In the past six months I’ve become a stockpiler.  I have enough toilet paper to TP half of Kennebunkport on Halloween Eve, if the spirit moves me. My larder features 12 cans of Campbell’s Cream of Shrimp soup. Twelve cans! This summer I discovered a delicious haddock recipe that required cream of shrimp soup. I’m ready for the long winter.

Every room in my house boasts a bottle of Purell or USE ME hand sanitizer. A variety of masks (N95, pink calico, Local Color lobster buoys) sit in a pile on the counter by the front door next to a box of Clean Ones disposable gloves.

I’ve seen just about every Netflix and Prime series produced.  We’ve just begun re-watching HBO’s “The Sopranos.”

It’s become normal to greet and say goodbye to friends with elbow bumps. I voted absentee. I pray nightly that I don’t have any reason to board an airplane in the coming months. 

I do this automatically, with acceptance. COVID’S death rate in the United States is approaching 225,000 and there are dire projections for the next 12 weeks. Yesterday I learned my older brother Robert and his son Patrick diagnosed positively for COVID.  That’s hitting too close to home.

I’ll do whatever Dr. Fauci and other scientists suggest to keep the virus at bay.