One Year and Counting

It has been a year since the world took a sharp left turn. 

Last year, the Little Man and I were planning a garden. He was muddling through school. The First Reader was waiting on his father's deathbed (or so we thought. Spoiler alert: stubborn old men can sometimes have astounding powers of recovery). I knew there was yet another epidemic in China, and I knew it was coming for us. I wrote a post about it, as the panic swelled.... which did as much good as spitting in the wind. And a year ago, I caught it myself. 

It's been quite a year. It hasn't destroyed my faith in humanity, but it's been a near thing at times. A person, they can be a good, decent soul. People are dumb panicky beasts who prefer to run with the mob than use their gray matter. I can't even talk here about all the ways I have seen that displayed, and just how much it irks me. 

It took me a long time to recover. Last year was mostly me trying to hang on by my fingernails while being sick. I'm finally, after a year, back to the physical point I was before I dealt with it, and the long-term effects. And even now I'm cautious, because maybe I'm not, and I'll have another relapse. This sucks rocks, and not nice smooth river ones. I'm lucky, I'm alive. A lot of people are not. Was this a terribly lethal pandemic? No, it was not. It never was going to be. However, disease kills, and we as a nation had lost sight of that. Especially diseases that are novel to the immune system. Even the long-term effects, like I dealt with, are not new to this disease, it's just that we haven't really paid attention to them before. We simply don't have that many people who come down with infectious disease and have the media pay attention to them. 

I can look back at this last year and rage in frustration, or I can look forward and try to see what can be made of the mess we are all in. 

The First Reader and I have begun again to do our favorite version of a 'date' which consists of a long drive in the country, and trying to find a local mom-and-pop restaurant while we're out. We did this yesterday, and it was enough to make you cry. Restaurant after restaurant, closed. Our favorite local place, with the amazing crispy brussels sprouts... gone. It made it partway through, it was open a few months back, but the weight of a year of restrictions and uncertainty was too much. We saw multiple places that were either gone entirely, or had shortened and changed their hours, or were no longer offering dine-in options. So many people have lost their livelihoods. The owners, the folks who cooked and served there. And this is just the restaurants, which is what we were paying attention to yesterday. When we've stopped to eat in the last few weeks, we've noted that the prices of food have gone sharply up. Compensating in some small way for the inability to serve as many people, while operating costs have not gone down any. 

We are seeing the ripples. I see it in many ways, the restaurants are just one small way. Chains? They are doing all right. It's the small businesses who have borne the brunt of this, and who have buckled until they can bear it no longer. We are changing, and I don't like what we are becoming. 

We don't have a lot of budget for eating out. But we're already planning a trip to a little place we found yesterday, so we can get there while it's open (we missed it by ten minutes). Because, well, what else can you do? Try not to spend all our money in the big conglomerates that made money hand over fist while the small businesses were forced to close. Support the entrepreneurs who are fighting for their life by making, and doing. 

It's going to get worse. I couldn't have imagined this, a year ago. I knew that the world was on a pivot point. I said, it's changing. 

I was right. I wish I had been wrong.