If someone had told me a year ago that I would have to close my full-time music studio and move all my students online, losing a third of them in the process, for an entire year, I would have said they were crazy.
If someone had said that I wouldn’t see my daughter for over a year, except for a couple of hours in a state park in the middle of nowhere, I would have looked at them like they had three heads.
If said crazy person had predicted that all of the fun activities in which I normally engaged over a year’s time, such as music festivals, parties, gigs, concerts, beach trips, holiday celebrations, birthdays, and student recitals, would all be canceled, I would have told them to go to hell.
I have never held my 11-month-old great-niece who lives 10 minutes away. My 2 1/2-year-old great-nephew who lives 15 minutes away doesn’t know who I am.
Not one person, besides the three of us who live here, has set foot in my house for a year.
All regular doctor and dental exams have been postponed.
Friday the 13th of March, 2020. The Day The Earth Stood Still.
I knew that stuff got real when the NBA canceled all pro basketball games. The Suzuki Graduation Concert, a formal affair at Settlement Music School in Philadelphia in which one of my students was to perform, was canceled. Then the schools were closed. And my husband was laid off from his job. And the world, and my world, stopped in its tracks.
I am grateful for the health care workers who did not stop. The grocery store folks who did not stop. All the essential workers didn’t stop.
I have lived a cautious life, visiting an average of two public indoor places a week, with a mask on.
I have watched the waves of pandemic invade and recede, coming ever closer, washing away people on the perimeter of my life… friends of friends, relatives of relatives. I’ve heard medical people I know describe the carnage in their workplaces.
I watched, horrified, the numbers rise… A 9/11, every day. More dead than in the Second World War.
I appreciate how fortunate I and my family have been.
The miracle of science brings hope ever closer. That proverbial tunnel light is glimmering. I begin to talk of “when I reopen the studio” and “when we go on vacation”.
And yet, as an introvert, this unprecedented time of solitude has in some ways been a solace. It’s been a period of reevaluation, of decluttering, physically and spiritually. Prioritizing. I’ve done more hiking in the woods. Lost a beloved dog and adopted another.
I received my second vaccine dose during this anniversary week.
Inner Voice 