Somehow this new normal, at least for now, has everyone in a tailspin. We can't go out! No church! No meetings! No movies or malls or bars or eating out!! Surely this is the epitome of durance vile. (A term used for medieval dungeons in novels and fantasy!) And I sit at home as usual, and shake my
head, not quite understanding what all the furor and angst is about.
Yes, we are faced with a serious epidemic which can kill people and has, which can be devastating in some places. That I get. No, I do not want to catch it either. Although I feel that I am probably ten years healthier and in better shape than most people my age (76 and 11 months) I am in the age group that is supposedly vulnerable and most likely to perish if we catch this virus. So I understand the concern and even the austere precautions, which may or may not end up being worse than the illness itself.
But back to social distancing. What a phrase! We do abuse the poor English language something awful but that's off my track. For me this is of very little impact and even less distress. From my earliest memories, my parents were not big on sociability--no parties and only casual visits to a few households in Jerome, up there on Sunshine Hill in the later 1940s, Then the polio epidemic came along and I, still the only child, was almost wrapped in swaddling and confined to a cage to "protect" me. We did hie off to California where I guess there were currently fewer cases and stayed for a time with relatives. My very young memory really did not register how long. I know I had not yet started school. At that same time, I do remember quarantine signs on people's doors. Red was measles, yellow chicken pox, green mumps and probably others, or at least that is what I recall.
Until I started school--in first grade since somehow I never made it to kindergarten--I had minimal contact with other children. Most of the kids in our neighborhood were older but anyway, I played alone. It was about that time I started to make up games that were in essence stories of a sort. In a few more years, I was writing them down and starting to rewrite the books I was then reading to suit my idea of how they should go. Still, I did not have the run of the neighborhood and any play dates were generally brief and closely supervised. I survived first grade, more or less, By second I began six years of tiny rural schools, two in an eight pupil school where I was the only girl. The summer between those years we spent in the Kaibab Forest on the north rim of the Grand Canyon where my parents ran a fire lookout. There were no kids. Again, I played alone and was not dismayed at all.
Things did gradually open up some. I had friends once we moved to Clarkdale and when my brother Charlie came along, I was no longer the only and some of the excessive protection ceased--but not nearly all of it. Even through high school I did not date and attended very few special functions. By then the enmeshment of our family was growing stronger and tighter all the time. We did not bring friends home, much less do slumber parties or birthdays or much of anything. I think I spent one night at a girlfriend's in the entire span of years from age 6 to 19, when I graduated. The people who came to our house--and none of us went to theirs much at all--I can count on one hand.
After I left home and went to college and later to work, my world expanded geometrically and I slowly adjusted despite being still rather shy and very much an introvert. After I married a complete extrovert and people person, I had to adjust some more. We joined things and participated and talked to people a lot. There were times I loved it and others when it was still almost more than I could cope with. That life lasted for thirty two years. After Jim passed away, I found myself alone much more than I had been but still kept quite a few contacts. I went on that way for five years but then moved briefly to New Mexico, from there to Colorado and then back to New Mexico. I found myself reaching out, going out and interacting with other people less and less. Internet began to take the place of 'live' contacts and also the many letters I had written from about age twelve on.
It was not hard to slip back to the kind of self-sufficient life I had known in my formative years. True, I shared a home with my brother who is more of a people person than I am after years of working and being a union officer who had to travel and talk and meet and deal. But we both still carry that deep set feeling of holding the world at bay and a kind of mistrust that we can never completely distance ourselves from. Since 2009, I have not been active in any organization on a live meeting routine. I've never been a church goer and shopping gradually has become more of a chore or even an ordeal than a fun activity. The last movie I went to--a real theater movie? I think maybe a couple of Clint Eastwood flicks at the Olivehurst/Linda mall with my daughter when we lived up in north central California --that would be somewhere between 1977-83!!
So today, I am perfectly content to stay home and work on my various projects, be it writing, sewing/fabric art, beading, yard work, or whatever. I may talk to Charlie a half dozen times a day on our household activities and sometimes just shooting the bull. I talk to my dogs a lot but to other people? Not so much. I have got to where I can chat to folks I meet at the store or while doing some business but not to the extent that I 'miss' it when I now must either stay home or minimize contact when I have to go out. After one has lived a socially distanced life for the greater part of three quarters of a century, never goes to a bar and to church only for a necessary wedding or funeral, hardly ever sees a movie or attends a live performance and maybe a dozen times a year out to eat...what is there to feel deprived of?
I suppose many will find this shocking and certainly weird. I suppose it is, but my point is one can exist in such manner. Really! I am pretty sure I am not the only one who actually feels more comfortable being pretty much alone and can find amusement beyond adequate in reading, listening to music, playing videos or watching things on YouTube etc. To those who are very upset and feeling deprived, I can say
this too will pass. In those 75 years I have seen a number of apparently drastic developments and each of them has been survived by the majority of the people. The Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis, polio epidemic, MERSA/SARS, stock market crashes, and farther back the World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, the Great Depression, the Civil War... It just might be necessary for the populace to be shaken up now and then...too much ease and complacency can be stultifying.
