I would never normally insert an author's note in place of a chapter, but since it has been literally months since my last update, I felt that maybe I should drop a small note, to reassure everyone that yes, I am alive, and I have not abandoned this story, I promise!
Now that all the stress has begun to calm a bit, and some semblance of normalcy is starting to take hold, at least where I live, I'm finally able to think about things outside the immediate, and with that expansion of thought (literally, like the release that comes when someone stops kneeling on your chest, only this is more inline with someone kneeling on your brain) comes the ability to be creative again :D
Did you know, there is actually a term for what we have been living through? It's called a Cool Zone, which is defined in a number of different ways, but can be summarized thus: A period of time which is cool to learn about in history, but shit to live through.
I love the English language, and how there is an almost anal-retentive need to come up with a precise name for everything. Like Defenestration; Best. Word. Ever.
So, as my pay-the-bills, grown-up day job, I work in a grocery store as the assistant head-cashier. It's an Independent grocer, fairly small, and family-run. All of the staff are like family, too - we've worked together, for the most part, for years. We know each other's kids, we know each other's significant others' details, we pool together to buy everyone a birthday gift, or send flowers to their granny's funeral; there are few enough staff, and enough people who are really good at keeping up with social details, that we can keep track of stuff like that :)
So, back-track a few months, and in mid-March, Covid-19 hit our industry like a freight train. We had been watching reports nervously, as toilet paper ran off our shelves and nothing canned or frozen would stay in stock, and then the pandemic was declared, and everything changed literally overnight. I'm sure you've heard, or read similar stories; about apocalyptic vibes, impossible-to-stock shelves, toilet paper fights and other insanity that are, unfortunately, not much overblown. It was like nothing I could ever have imagined. Suddenly, my retail, claw-my-way-into-every-tiny-raise, job was classified as essential - I had strangers thanking me on the regular, just for getting up and going to work. I mean, intellectually, I understood; I didn't have to go to work. I have asthma, which gave me a very good reason to stay home, even - but that never even really occurred to me, except in a sort of abstract way. I got up each day, and walked through strangely empty streets to get on a bus, (because my husband and I decided years ago to cut our environmental emissions, and to downsize to one car) and rode the twenty minutes into work with the one or two other people who also had 'essential' jobs. We stayed as far away from each other as possible, and tried not look each other in the eye - as if that would somehow make things less real. We wore masks, because we knew we needed to make it to work again tomorrow, and we definitely knew we didn't want to bring anything home to our families.
I got up each day because that was my version of normal, in a suddenly chaotic world, and because someone needed to do it, and I was, and am, okay with that.
This is not to say I am heroic, or brave, or anything else that the children of my neighbors will tell me, when they put up colourful drawings in their windows, thanking front-line workers. Those people are the doctors and nurses, the health professionals and long-term care workers who faced infection knowingly every day. Me? I was just trying to keep things together, for me, and the people I worked with; my family-away-from-home, and my family-at-home.
My boss is over seventy, and she decided, very smartly, to heed the government's advisory, and stay home.
So did half our department.
They didn't feel comfortable working during the pandemic - or, in many cases, their parents didn't feel comfortable, as these were largely part-time students. Business suddenly quadrupled over night, and there were no bodies to man the store; I went overnight from working 40 hour work weeks with a lot of responsibility, to working 60 hour work weeks, with more responsibility than i knew what to do with as I tried to juggle my job, and my boss's, while trying to train a lot of new staff. We struggled to try to figure out what 'safe' meant without any government guidelines - because there were none, in those early days - just us, the grocery stores, trying to figure it out. ( Don't get me started on how irrationally furious I get when the Health Board people come in now, and tried to tell us how to be 'safe'. Where the hell were they three, or even two, months ago, when the real danger was there? Safe in their work-from-home offices, that's where. And I realise this reaction is at least 60% unfair, but I already admitted I am a bit irrational where this is concerned...but Covid also brought to the forefront a lot of inequities that will will resonate and sting for a long time to come, and I have realised that I am angry. I am surrounded by privilege, and it sucks.)
Suddenly, we had to figure out how to responsibly serve our community, how to organise a curb-side pickup program without any web interface from which to shop from, and how to deal with frightened, irrational people - customers I have served for years, that I know and genuinely like, getting into screaming matches, and other crazy or aggressive behavior, because tension and uncertainty often brings out ugly sides in us all. It was very much like viewing a post-appocolyptic world, and I (we) felt so disconnected from humanity - from each other, and from the world, as we all retreated into controlled, tight little bubbles, and began to fear the slightest contact with every one else. My grocery-story family quickly closed ranks - we were far too small to social distance from each other inside the back room, or the stock room, or even in the aisles; the only place in the store you could be assured of being empty was the lunch room - nobody had time for a break anymore, where twelve and thirteen hour days were now a norm. It quickly became a feeling of we were safe around each other - or at least, accepting that if one of us got sick, all of us were going to, so we dug in, and just focused only on staying safe from everyone else.
I have now heard all the irrational arguments - I have had people threaten to sue the store for allowing employees to wear masks - because we were 'scaring the children'. I have had others who shriek at me if I got within shouting distance of them, even when wearing a mask. People have accused obviously blind people of 'staring' at them, and people have gotten into ugly verbal spats over who was in line, who demanded, violently, to see a manager when informed that there were limits on certain products, because everyone needed them and supply was, well, limited.
And then, there were people who stepped aside, and let the elderly go ahead. Who waited without complaint, as we struggled to deal with volumes of consumers we had never been staffed to handle. Who had patience, and a smile and who genuinely made my day better, just by coming through the door. Who helped others, took their time and were just genuinely thoughtful. Who very carefully checked limits on products, and didn't call me three times every day to find out if we got Lysol Wipes in, and could I please forgo the both the limit and the $50 minimum for curbside pickup (since there was a limit of two per household, any time we were lucky enough to get them in) and have someone run a case of them out to their car?
The answer, by the way, almost always, is No. There are no Lysol wipes. There will never BE any Lysol wipes. They are all going to hospitals, instead of private homes. You will have to make do with non-name brand, and be happy we have those.
It been three months of hell, occasionally interspersed with moments of levity and sarcasm. I've lost sleep. I've lost weight. I did not, however, loose my sense of self, or my sanity. I smiled on, and greeted each new customer, and I kept things running. I hired and trained a metric crap-tonne of new staff, struggled to remember at least a quarter of the names of the new staff in other departments; And. Kept. Smiling. Because at the end of the day, that's what reassured people coming through our doors the most - that someone, somewhere, was doing okay, and wasn't scared, or anxious. Thing is, smile enough, and you begin to believe it yourself; it's almost magic.
Most At least half of the time, I even managed to produce a meal for my family at the end of the day; a meal that wasn't grilled cheese or cereal, I mean.
Now, we are in 'stage 3' of our re-opening here in Ontario, and people are by and large coping with the new normal, and tensions are receding. Toilet paper is back in stock; so are flour and yeast. Lineups are orderly, and the cans of vegetables are once again collecting dust on the shelf, ignored by everyone in favour of fresh. And I have time to think again.
I have dusted off my writing, and I am working away at the new chapter. Not quickly - more like, a few hundred words here and there as I try to get the rest of the fog out of my brain, and find my rhythm again, but the more I am able to relax, the more easily it comes, so I have hope that I will have this chapter to my beta before too much more time passes.
Hopefully, everyone out there is safe, and as secure as possible in finances and heath, both mental and physical :(
I miss writing - I miss your input and I miss being creative and being able to spin worlds and words out of gossamer thread and thin air. Still, we are adaptable, and I have endless faith in humanity. We shall endure, and we shall overcome, and we shall give many examples of kindness to one another along the way.
In the meantime, I am so, so honoured to have shared the journey with so many good, exemplary souls.
I promise, next time shall be a proper chapter, but in the meantime, my best wishes to each and every one of you, and I sincerely wish that the circumstances in your individual communities are improving, as well.
With love, and all my best wishes,
Ny(ruserra)