La Dolce Vita: This time last March

A year ago last weekend, I was driving to New Jersey to see my friend Adrienne. We didn’t know it then, but it would be the last time I’d see her. Weeks later she would lose her battle with cancer.

On that day, though, we talked about what felt an even more immediate threat looming on the horizon: the coronavirus.

As a cancer patient, Adrienne was concerned about getting N95 masks and not being out in public. Her husband had ordered freeze-dried meal kits for the family in case food wasn’t readily available. I was anxiously scanning websites for hand sanitizer and Lysol.

Driving home to Maine, I swung by my local drug store to grab some antibacterial soap for the office. The shelves with cleaning products were thinning out.

That week at work, the first in March of 2020, we planned, we kept an eye on the news and we wondered: how serious was this going to be?

I’m a planner, so I ordered, I stocked up, I created a policy. Some of those around me clearly thought I’d gone off the deep end, a Chicken Little crying that the sky was falling. But it helped me sleep at night.

The following week, we held a job fair and, for the first time had hand sanitizer in use and extra spacing and clean pens. It’s hard to look back and think of us all in one space, unmasked, meeting. It’s unthinkable now, a year later.

A week later, we - like so many businesses around the country - had closed our doors. We began the great work-from-home experiment, using this new thing called Zoom and trying to appear professional while dealing with barking dogs, crying babies and spouses who wandered in and out of screens in their bathrobes.

A news junkie, my TV was rarely off and I read article after article about this pandemic that was changing the world. It didn’t help me sleep at night, and so I worked hour after hour, starting at six after my virtual workout and going late in the night.

In the greater community, toilet paper became a hot commodity, people watched cars for out-of-state license plates and everyone worried if they’d be able to drive past the beach.

Businesses closed.

Unemployment claims rose daily.

And our parents and grandparents grew a little more isolated, a little lonelier as the months went on.

Children and teachers and parents struggled with remote learning, with a lack of socialization.

Streets grew eerily quiet.

And one day it became second nature to put on a mask if you’re leaving home.

It’s been a long, life-changing year. But just as each of us who lived through it can remember exactly where we were and what we were doing on 9/11, when the planes hit, when the towers fell, so, too, will those days in March 2020 be burned in our memories.

We will long ask each other, where were you when ...? And generations from now, history books will talk about those days when the world stood still.

For me, those days are looming large right now, as we begin our second year in this altered state.

I wonder what lessons we’ve learned, how far we have yet to go until this is behind us, and most of all what things will remain forever changed.

Time marches on, but in one March time changed forever in how we count our days and spend our time.

What will this second March bring?

Laura Dolce can be reached at Laura.Dolce@rocketmail.com.

Laura Dolce can be reached at Laura.Dolce@rocketmail.com.