Memories of Lockdown

I wish I had kept a daily diary of all that went on while the government illegally locked us down during Covid. But I do have memories, and many of them quite wonderful. 

I remember the stillness and quiet, sitting in the backyard with my wife, watching our children play, watching the chickens do that scratch-scratch-look thing as they hunted for mites in the dirt. 

It was a time when the Catholic school kids on the block finally gelled with the Publics, and they traveled in bike-packs all over the neighborhood. Honey, where are the kids? Just look for the bikes strewn in someone’s front yard, in front of the forest where they built an “Indian village,” or over near the pipeline, the one that brings various kinds of fuel all the way from Florida to New England. 

There are fond memories of my wife and daughters having a tea party in the living room, riding bikes to Duck Donuts. They did TV exercises in the basement. There was family time during lockdown! Busy dads worked from home. Travel sports, that family killer, died. They died for a time; sadly, they are back. 

I say this remembering also that our precious family time was juxtaposed against those poor souls who were shut in completely alone and lonely. Some were forced to die alone. A friend of a friend committed suicide during this lock down. We remember all these sorrowful events. 

There were remarkable moments, though. One of them was Cathy and Gigi participating in an exceptional choral event put on by musical genius Eric Whitaker. A virtual choir of 17,572 singers from 129 countries submitted their faces and voices in four-part harmony all singing his song “Sing Gently.”

I remember the shortage of paper, particularly toilet paper. I had heard our local Giant Grocery store had an open hour for seniors only, those over 60, from 6-7 a.m., during which we had free run of the place. About a hundred of us Boomers formed a long line around 5:45. When the doors opened, we made a mad rush for the toilet paper and picked it clean. Sorry, Gen-Xers. No paper for you. There was one Xer who tried to get in line. We shooed him away. 

Do you remember those drive-through Covid tests where they stuck that thing halfway into your brain and swished it around. And then you waited for a few days to get the word? And the masking, all the stupid masking. I got chased down by the cart guy at Giant. He was a real masking fascist. I told him to leave me alone, I had the “governor’s exemption.” 

We went on vacation in those days, out to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. At Sunday Mass, in the Church where Biden goes, they waited in the vestibule and literally sprayed you down with God-knows-what. And they MADE you wear a mask in the Church. I took my bandana and covered my entire face. I was so angry. And then, it was time for communion—not during the actual Mass, but after the final blessing. You were invited to line up at the side aisle to receive and then immediately get kicked out the door. I was so angry I could not receive. I remember being so angry that I littered. I deliberately littered. I know, kind of a juvenile rebellion, but I thought, let the local masking fascists pick it up. 

We spent some time in New York during those days. We were denied entry to some of our favorite restaurants because we did not have proof of the shot. We never took the shot. I remember phony Covid shot cards circulating. We never had the nerve. 

We tried TV Mass one morning. We knelt in front of the TV until my daughter Lucy pointed out how ridiculous this was. We stopped and never did it again.  We tried TV Mass one morning. We knelt in front of the TV until my daughter Lucy pointed out how ridiculous this was. We stopped and never did it again. Tweet This

A local priest let it be known that while public Masses were banned, he would still do his private Mass in Church every morning at such and such a time, and if you happened to be there…wink-wink. He did this until some little Covid Nazi ratted him out. 

I went to pray one day at another local Church and discovered they were setting up for a funeral, so I stayed. I went back one day and participated in an unexpected Confirmation. Then I started trolling the local funeral home websites looking for Masses. 

Do you remember when Masses started again and there was all that dumb spacing, six feet, blue tape closing every other pew. I watched a friend, with her huge family, walk into Mass one Sunday, hesitate, and then proceed to sit in the forbidden zone. She later said, “I’m not playing today.” Good for you!

One of the most enduring memories was drive-through Confession at our girls’ Opus Dei high school. The ingenious priests set up outside in the parking lot behind a screen, and you literally drove up, rolled down your window, confessed and drove away. There was a huge line for this on that cold and blustery day. 

I remember the fear. That Christmas we would not get anyone to come over for Christmas dinner. We had a huge Ossabaw hog shoulder that we had to refreeze. 

Remember all the stupid hand-washing, constant hand-washing, all the plastic separating us from check out ladies, the squirt bottles of magic Covid-killing goo? We found out later that our daughter Gigi thought that everyone was going to get it and that everyone would die. The safety bastards did this to her. Gigi eventually did get it, the first in her school, and she shut down the entire sixth grade for a week. We called her Typhoid Gigi. Heck, we all got Covid, maybe a few shivery days, nothing more. 

Her school was exemplary, though. While it shut down during those first panicky spring weeks and went frustratingly online, it opened up full-time in the fall when the rest of the schools were still closed. And it was very forgiving about masking, allowing girls to opt out for religious reasons and to follow guidelines established by the Americans with Disabilities Act (both our girls are dyslexic, a covered condition). 

And then there were the grim yet heroic situations like the summer Brian Barrera got Covid and then pneumonia. He lived in the valley of the shadow of death for many weeks, months. He was placed in a coma and had to go on not just a breathing machine, but an ECMO machine that circulated his blood outside his body and then back in. These machines are usually used for open heart surgery. He lived on it for a few months. There were prayers for him literally all over the world. Every evening, a zoom rosary. He set a world record for living on that machine…and surviving. When he came out, he said one of his coma memories was harps. 

Remember all the Covid talk? It was all you could talk about in those days. You could not get together with friends and family without incessant Covid talk. How many “cases.” Remember all those phony “cases?” And all the deaths. Remember that anyone who died with Covid was said to have died from Covid. As sad as those deaths were, we know they lied to us about that. They lied a lot.

We have to remember those days. Write down your memories. Remember the bad days and the good. And remember the lies they told us. Remember all of them. You know they are coming around again. This time we will be ready.