I am a person who acknowledges and sometimes honors anniversaries of all kinds–birthdays, death days, bondings, First Bloods, Cronings. You get the picture. I sometimes send actual cards and sometimes e-greetings of some sort. But mostly I acknowledge them in my heart and in my altar time. Prayers of blessing, prayers of remembrance.
I can do all this with reasonable certainty because I write notes in my calendar to remind me. And Facebook is always poking its nose into my friends list to remind me to make a donation or post a photo or send a gift card. I have five thousand friends on Facebook (I know, right?) so I send a fair number of greetings every day.
We are coming up on the One Year mark for my personal Covid shut-down. I don’t have to look in the calendar to know when and what it was. On Friday the 13th of March last year, I attended the happy launch party for my friend Diotima’s new book and the next day, we drove to Charlotte to see our daughter. We had lunch and visited, filled the car with gas and drove the two hours home.
Where we have stayed–for the most part–ever since. Short trips out for groceries, meds, post office (I am still flogging books) and driving through the bank’s drive-up window. There are a few exceptions–signing books in empty bookshops, taking someone to the hospital for a procedure, that sort of thing–and those few and far between.
March 14.
I’ve got us registered for an appointment for the vaccine and now we wait for our turn. The process seems unnecessarily complicated but I don’t care. I’m ready. I’m waiting.