And the terrible, quiet, hopeful time between

When we began sheltering in place, on that cold, snowy day in March, Spring was just around the corner and time moved fast. The virus moved faster, crossing borders, spilling into our communities, our workplaces and churches, our homes. As the virus gained momentum, we lost ours. Businesses closed, jobs put on hold, hospitals filled. We watched the news in horror while we stayed at home, away from our coworkers, friends and family. Suddenly everyone was suspect, a potential conduit for the virus. Zoom and FaceTime replaced coffee breaks and hugs. Stay in. Stay safe. This too shall pass.

A year from now, a decade from now, most of us won’t look back on 2020 and remember the little details of those early house arrest days. Maybe because it will hurt less to forget them. People died, so many people. Parents with children struggled to work from home while simultaneously homeschooling their confused and bored kids. The elderly and sick shut their doors to the world, to their families and friends, their support system suddenly fraught with danger and sickness. Singles stopped dating, couples stopped going out with other couples. Isolation. Fear. Boredom.

As the virus picked up speed and time slowed down, quarantine became our new normal. My family had been white-knuckling our way through the months leading up to the pandemic, planning every moment around my Mother’s tenuous health. A month before we began sheltering in place, she suffered a stroke. And when the world shut down, the rehab center where she convalesced, cut her off from us. My father sheltered alone in their home while my husband and I recovered from the virus in our own home. Stay away. Stay safe. We’d been teammates on the same boat, all rowing together, perfectly synchronized. Now we were isolated, drifting and alone. But safe.

For me, those months of isolation felt like a long walk home through a quiet forest. No side trails, just the path ahead, taking shape with each step forward. Take as long as you need. Stop worrying about the time passing. Just keep walking.  After months of isolation, the days began to blend into each other, as regular days will do in all our lives, the parts of our lives that won’t make into of future photo albums. If we were books, these days might mark the blank page at the end of the chapter, the anticipation of what will come next. The promise that next year everything will be different, hopefully better.

My mother eventually came home from the hospital and my parents hunkered in together for the long haul of waiting out the virus. We were a team again, though no hugging please. The stroke had gifted my mother with a smorgasbord of new challenges. Never a patient woman, she railed against the waiting, the boredom of waiting out COVID, a story she had no interest in hearing again and again and again. As I watched her struggle against what everyone told her she must do and what she wanted to do, I began to realize that my relationship with time is her legacy to me.

Time has a way of telling its own story

Most of us talk about time passing in the same way we talk about passing the ketchup or a stranger at the mall. Sometimes it flies like a bird or a plane overhead while other times it flows like a river. We spend time like money, but we buy and steal it too, like little white lies and kisses. And then we squander it and kill it and when time runs out, we lament how much time we’ve lost. Time might heal all wounds, avenge all wrongs but, in the end, it takes everything too.

As a child, my mother regularly scolded me for wishing my life away. The anticipation of Christmas filled my time, made it feel endless, wishing as fun a pastime as any. And then, suddenly time accelerated. Without warning, life began to move faster than simply wishing for Christmas morning to finally arrive. An all-nighter to study for an exam folded into the next essay due, the next date with my boyfriend, events somersaulting one after another with no care for safety. A date turned into an engagement, to a marriage, to children, moment after moment recklessly careening around each corner.

When hanging a calendar on your fridge was still a thing, I looked forward to the promise of 365 clear, clean days. It never bothered me that another year of my life had passed, the coming year was a promise, a story waiting for me to tell it. Family birthdays, weddings and baptisms, death dates and anniversaries, filling up the little white squares with the important things that I couldn’t allow myself to miss or forget. And as the year unfolded, I filled my calendar with appointments, deadlines and meetings, marking time. My simple way of reassuring myself that with each day that passed, I was still here, still part of it all.

For me, sheltering in place turned back time, slowed it and maybe gave me something I’d forgotten I’d lost…

I’ve always been one of those people who measure each by projects completed. COVID forced me to pause and wait and watch. The back to back appointments, without time for lunch or a moment to catch my breath, jumping from one flight to another stopped dead. The world struggled to catch its breath from a virus determined to steal it and I wondered about those things that had frustrated me just a short time ago.

The quirkiness of time, how it can be quick or slow, depending on whether you’re celebrating or grieving, worrying or waiting, has never been clearer. My COVID days began with calls to my parents, brothers and children and friends. FaceTime with our beautiful, precocious granddaughter – a bonus. And in the middle, work projects discussed, completed, next steps put in place. Random cribbage and catan games with my husband, long morning walks, wine on our patio in the evening, more bonuses. Sheltered and safe in our home, life continued to be busy, a different pace, but still busy.

Time rarely gives back but sheltering in place gave our family the chance to see our third son and his bride married on their backyard deck. They traded vows while we watched and cheered and cried with them on Zoom. Our second grandchild arrived and we met him for the first time via our cell phones. You might think the virus stole those things from us but we don’t. We took our time, we slowed down and savored each homecoming, singularly unique in a world where time stood still while it simultaneously marched at a terrifying pace.

You can’t tell a story without time – and you cannot tell time without telling a story. In a story, time carries the story, moves it along from beginning to end. Past and present, beginning and end, now and then, BC to AC. The story of our sheltering in place, of navigating our way through this virus is different for each of us. And though the virus is in our way, changing our lives in ways we wish it didn’t, it’s part of our story now. Perhaps the things we once thought burdensome weren’t all that bad. Maybe the great burdens in life aren’t the things that frustrate and annoy and make us feel like we’re out of time. Because, if we’re honest with ourselves, we were never out of time, just distracted from it.

I’m beginning to understand that the greatest burden of my life may not be not be running out of time and not even no longer being part of time – but being apart from those I love at the time they need me most. COVID isolated us but it didn’t rob us of love. My children and grandchildren are safe. My parents are together again. And they’re safe.

Before COVID, after COVID, the story is still being written, the plot progressing and enlarging. For some, blossoming, for others ending. Eventually we’ll reach the end of the COVID story, when the virus finally runs out of time.

And in the end, we’ll have our friends, our families, our stories, which is the perfect beginning, middle and end to the story of our lives.