Pandemic Dissonance

 Hi, friends.

I hope you'll enjoy and share this essay published earlier this week at Feminine Collective.  

Be well,

Mary

Photo: ©Julie Anderson, excerpted from Jackson Pollock’s painting “Slice”

Unless we are divinely called to monastic life, most of us don’t thrive in isolation. Even we introverts have our limits. Besides, it’s one thing to choose seclusion and determine for ourselves when we want to hole up alone and for how long. It’s quite another to have confinement thrust upon us and to have it go on… and on… and on…

It was a Saturday in March when my husband and I sat in a local brew pub and vaguely wondered if it was safe to dine inside. We’d just hiked a trail where the scent of hand sanitizer was palpable. The next day, Colorado’s Governor decreed that anyone who’d recently been in Summit County should quarantine at home for two weeks. A few days before, we’d been to Breckenridge with family visitors.

Two weeks? No problem. It’ll be like a campout.

We washed our hands and loaded up on groceries. We washed our hands and pulled out the jigsaw puzzles. We washed our hands and tried new recipes, then washed our hands some more and binge-watched The Tiger King. There was an ease and a coziness to those early days, believing our confinement would be brief and that it was a noble endeavor in the interest of public health.

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