This post is written 4 years after the pandemic, in Septmeber, 2024. These are my memories of those days and happenings.
So here’s how I remember it – in the news there were reports of a new disease showing up in China. I think the first time I heard anything about it was in early December, 2019. I’m not one for following the news with any great interest. Still, headlines would pop up on my phone, and I was definitely aware that there was a thing kinda happening. In late February is when I remember it became a thing that was talked about almost daily in the US news. I think there were cases coming to the US then, and so our media started taking notice.
In March one of the schools in downtown Salt Lake (Either East or West High school I think) had a positive test? and so the school board voted to close the school. Then schools all around the valley/state started talking about the same thing. By Friday I remember sitting on the couch in the green room and read that Canyons School District was going to decide whether or not to shut down our schools. I called the district immediately. It was about 10 am, and I wanted to know if we were going to have a looooong weekend. I was SO EXCITED FOR THE FUN OF AN UNEXPECTED HOLIDAY! I asked if they were shutting down the schools and the woman who answered told me that they were in the meeting right then to decide that. She said we would know in an hour.
The word came – go get your kids, school is closed. YAY! What fun we were going to have! It was only for two weeks we were told. In two weeks everyone would be quarantined and this whole thing would be nipped in the bud and life could go on as normal.
HAHAHA. That wasn’t what happened at all.
The first thing Wyatt and I did when the pandemic started (like that very first weekend) was go out and buy a trampoline. We hadn’t had one since our remodel, and had been meaning to get to it. If the kids were going to be home (and relegated to home, no going out . . .) then we needed a tramp. It’s a good thing we did that. With everyone stuck at home, entertainment and sports equipment very quickly became sold out everywhere, and it became very difficult to get those sorts of things for several years to come.
So, schools closed across the state. That same day the government kinda shut down everything. It took maybe another week, but very quickly businesses were ordered to close, and people were told to stay home, not visit anyone, and basically hide out – again, just for two weeks – while this whole situation got under control.
But really, things were just starting to get out of control.
For the first week I thought the kids would go back to school, but by the second I could tell the mounting hysteria would keep things closed probably until the end of the year. I was right. The kids never went back for the rest of the school year. They were supposed to do “online school.” But I told my Elementary Schoolers (Nate, Roo & Ejo) NO! We are not doing that. I let them color pages if they wanted, but I refused to give them computer time (the way the school wanted them to do it, but I wasn’t about to let them have more screen time), and I told the middle schoolers if they wanted to do it, they could, but I wasn’t going to follow up on it or monitor it. It was up to them. They mostly did it, but it was very loosey-goosey for the rest of the school year.
The next year they didn’t know even up until the week before if they would be opening the schools or not. The government didn’t decide what they were doing until August sometime. Then they decided to move to a 4 day in-person school week, with a 5th day as online learning. Again, I said no to the online stuff for my elementary schoolers, and “only if you want to” to my middle schoolers. And Olivia just handled her stuff. It was actually really really nice to have that extra day off every weekend!
I remember talking to my friend on a morning walk in those first couple weeks (lets be honest, quarantine was never a thing I actually subscribed to) when they had announced the schools would not be opening back up, and that people really needed to be in criminal-level-lock-down in various parts of the country (more liberal areas were more hysterical and threatening about lock downs than more conservative areas – and since I live in Utah, but in Salt Lake County of Utah, it wasn’t wildly horrible, but you could sure get some nasty looks and people in your face about stuff, depending on who you ran into).
Anyhoo, I remember talking to my friend and saying “what about the kids that are being abused at home, what about the psychological health of teenagers, what about the verbal and social skills of young children, what about the education set backs of all students everywhere – all reasons people need to be out amongst each other. It’s interesting to me that as a woman of no “expertise” I could see these problems coming years ahead of time. Why couldn’t the “experts” see the problems they were creating and work to find more realistic solutions? They still talk about the fall out of these very issues to this day.
Anyhoo, things got kinda intense that first month. Supplies flew of the shelves, and for the first time in my life I went to the grocery store and the shelves were empty. We had lots of food, and we never got to a point where I worried about making dinner. BUT – what we didn’t have was toilet paper.
And it’s funny – I remember being at Costco the week before the start of the pandemic and Wyatt was with me and we were walking around as we rounded the corner where the TP was I thought “I need TP, I should get some.” But Wyatt was with me and he was already moving away from it, and I didn’t want to walk back and get it and carry it to the cart . . . so I thought “I’ll just get it next week when I’m here alone.” And that whole conversation was very distinct in my head. And I think looking back on it, it was the Spirit telling me to get some TP. I think that’s why the convo was so emblazed in my head. But I didn’t heed that, and we went home empty handed and the next week there was no TP to be found.
And we very nearly ran out. There was a huge run on TP and there were shortages around the whole country. Finally, when we were within 24-48 hours of completely running out, we got a text from my brother Thomas, saying Macey’s on 80th South and 13th East had TP. It was 10 o’clock at night and Wyatt rushed up there and was able to buy an entire box of it! (Stores were also rationing how much you could buy). It was sold out within minutes after Wyatt got it. It was the horrible 1 ply scratchy camping type of TP that I would normally never buy. But it was SO RELIEVING to get some finally. I dealt with (and still do, I think) PTSD of the worry of not being able to provide for my babies in such a dire time. Ever since I’ve kept a VERY HEALTHY STOCK OF TOILET PAPER AT ALL TIMES – at least 12 Costco sized packages of TP (One costco sized package will last our family about a month, so 12 is a full year of TP). Eventually TP returned to the shelves, but it was rationed thru the rest of the year of 2020.
The empty shelves were also super discouraging in general. I remember it was about 3 years before you could reliably get pasta at the store, and the stores in general just changed. They’ve never gone back to how they used to be – so convenient and accommodating. Stores are now more reminiscent of Russia – you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. There’s no meaningful deli, or other things that were so nice back in the day.
Because I worried about the psychological impact on my kids, I did 2 things – 1) we didn’t go to crowded places. Church closed (that was trauma itself) and we did home church. We didn’t visit our elderly neighbors or friends. But I did take orders from the older women in the neighborhood for groceries, and I would buy what they needed and just drop it on their front porch for them. We wanted to protect the elderly because we were told they were more vulnerable to this new disease.
At the same time we continued to have friends over to play. I let my kids roam the neighborhood with their friends. We invited family over for dinner and hosted BBQ’s (almost all outside). We tried to treat it like an extended summer. I tried SUUUUUUPER HARD to make it seem like a little bit of an adventure for the kids. Years will come and go and they can tell me what they thought of it and if they feel the psychological scars of the time (I sure do have a few).
At first they (the government) told us not to wear masks – to save PPE (Personal Protection Equipment, an acronym we all became very familiar with on the news) for healthcare workers. Volunteers were enlisted to sew and make masks for hospitals, since they couldn’t be manufactured or imported fast enough. I remember spending Saturdays sewing masks.
Then about six weeks later they changed their minds, and masks were mandated. We bought fabric masks off Amazon – we wore those all summer. At the end of the summer they decided those types of masks were actually spreading the virus more, and we had to go to these disposable ones that you could buy at the stores. Years later they decided those masks didn’t stop the spread of the virus either. But still, America complied. I complied. I still have boxes of masks in the supply closet. We use them when we fly on airplanes or feel a little sicky. Haha.
It’s funny because I remembered another conversation in my head – I was in the paint aisle at Home Depot and I overheard this kinda elderly woman on the phone. She was talking about these certain types of masks that you had to have in your emergency storage – N-95 masks, which they sold there in the paint aisle at Home Depot. And I remember thinking “I should get some of those.” Again, I didn’t. About 10 months later the pandemic started. I remember wishing I had just bought some when I had the chance. They are the only masks that really were decided to be effective. Everything else just made people “feel better,” without actually offering any protection. But of course, like the TP, they were out of stock and gone almost as soon as the pandemic started.
Every day the death count from the pandemic was reported on the news. It was in the 100’s of thousands per day in the US alone. It was really overwhelming. And yet life seemed to go as “mostly” normal. I didn’t know people who got Covid, and then when I started to know people who got it, it was akin to the flu- three to five days in bed and maybe some pesky lingering symptoms. It was hard to reconcile what was being reported in the news to my own personal experience. In the end I never knew anyone personally that either died or was hospitalized for the disease. Even the elderly and weak seemed to be okay. Later it was reported that anyone with a co-morbidity that tested positive for the virus were counted towards the numbers . . . meaning if you had covid and died in a car accident, you died of Covid. If you were in late stage cancer and had Covid, you died of Covid. I don’t think we’ll ever know what the realistic numbers and threats of the disease actually were.
It was also a super interesting exercise in psycological social systems to me. There were lots of people who were not going to cooperate with the government or doctors or who ever, no matter what. There were lots of people who were going to demand complete cooperation not only from themselves, but everyone else in the room too.
One day when I was on my walk with friend early in the morning (like before 6 am), we passed an old woman out on the trail. At the time the social distancing rule was 6 feet- you weren’t supposed to get within six feet of another person. The trail is probably ten feet wide consistently. Not thinking much about anything as we walked and talked in the early morning, we passed by the woman. Suddenly she started barking at us (not really yelling, but that old lady scolding) about being too close to her. I remember being surprised – not only were we not within six feet, but what was she doing out on a public trail if she was worried about getting close to others? Still, in the same instant those thoughts ran through me, I stepped over another couple feet to make her feel more comfortable. I didn’t say anything, or even acknowledge her beyond side stepping, but continued on. A few feet later my friend whispered to me: That is the sort of person who would turn the Jews in to the Nazis. I was surprised at her insight, but yes, upon reflection, she was right. People were so bent out of shape about their own well being that they weren’t thinking clearly about the rationality of what was going on.
Eventually we had to be brave and begin to step out, being rational. First we went back to school. Then church (that order breaks my heart), then we stopped wearing our masks when we were with small groups. Then big groups. Eventually we kinda moved back into life as before – as much as we could. But really, life would never be the same. Somehow we were broken – into fear of each other, mistrust (more) of the government, and a society that seemed to forget how to work together. It was years before supply chains were more or less fixed. It was years before you could buy parts and products so readily available before. America felt not like the land of plenty, but the land of rations and fear and mistrust. In some ways it is still that way.
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