It is Sunday evening. Only three days since the morning the grocery store was over populated with at risk shoppers at 6:00 in the morning. If the virus gets me, I will blame that morning. That is the day I decided to stop going to public places.

Friday, just two days ago, my husband and I visited my mother-in-law, who is in her nineties. We didn’t hug her. We kept our appropriate social distance.

Friday is also the day my daughter said that she and her husband will stop visiting us. They pulled my sixteen-month old granddaughter from the daycare she attends three days each week. They don’t want us to watch her once a week any more, or the other grandparents. They will juggle their schedules, my daughter working from home now and her husband still working out in the scary world, so they can take turns watching and playing with the baby while the other works. That was a hard day for me.

Our son told me earlier last week that he will no longer come visit. He will do porch drops of anything we need, mow our lawn, but not come in. That, too, was a hard day. I hope when the rain stops, we can sit far apart on our patio and talk.

My other daughter lives in Texas. I’m so glad that they flew here in February, before all the madness began.

No church today either. That was odd.

Yesterday, my husband had a prescription to pick up at the pharmacy drive through.

“Wait for me! I gotta get out,” I said.

It had been less than twenty-four hours since our visit to his mom’s but it seemed so much longer!! I was excited to go through the drive through pharmacy three minutes from our house.

I feel like I have not been out of the house in a week! Why is that?

My husband and I are both introverts. We turn down social invitations many times because we prefer being at home. I do get out often for my volunteer job, lunch and games with friends, small faith groups, and numerous other things. But I am also perfectly happy at home and always make time to just crash. My husband really is even more of a home body. 

This evening, as he was walking one of his house loops, he said, “This is boring.” The odd part is that he did exactly what he does most days but today it was boring.

For me, the day went quickly. I was doing a number of things, but it still seemed lonely even though it was a day full of things I enjoy.

I felt the itch to get out and go somewhere, as though I had been stuck home for weeks.

Our county begins a “stay at home” order at midnight, but we already had limits of ten people in any social gathering. Restaurant dining rooms were closed down several days ago. Restaurants have been allowed to do drive-through, curbside pickup, or deliveries. That will still continue. We can go to grocery stores, doctor appointments, the pharmacy, and people with necessary jobs can go to work. I’m trying to avoid going out.

Someone I know was looking for a hairdresser to give a haircut. Hers was booked until midnight, trying to get in as many people as she could before it closed for thirty days. Wow. The order is for thirty days!

This weekend, very few cars have driven up our normally busy street.

It all seems so bizarre, this social distancing.

I have been considering what I can learn educationally and emotionally from this lockdown experience, from the worry, from the fear. I have wondered how this will change me because I believe that, in some way, this should change me.

I should be a better person on the other side of this isolating experience than I was going in.

I wonder how or if this will change all of us.

(I wrote the draft of this post Sunday night, but, believe it or not, I have been too busy to edit it before today.)