Some days I feel like the pandemic has dropped a screen over my life or perhaps, more accurately, a cage. I go about my business while straining to see through the filmy mesh of worry and fear, trying to finagle my hand through the bars to reach some vestige of my previous life. I cherish what remains the same about summer—the taste of fresh corn on the cob, the pleasant exhaustion from swimming laps in the pool, the August song of insects heralding the start of another school year.

I can count the times my husband and I have eaten at a restaurant on one hand and then it’s only been outside. I enjoy cooking, but there are days when I just Can’t. Come Up. With. Something. For supper. Again. I rarely wear anything other than shorts and tee-shirts. Or put on real make-up. Most of what I buy, other than groceries, I order online, and unlike most years, I haven’t hit the stores for sales on summer clothing and sandals. I miss meeting someone for lunch without careful planning. I miss the exhilaration of being out in the world, of having a reason to dress decently or buy something for a special occasion. Like the upcoming wedding of my best friend’s daughter which we may or may not  attend, depending on what the virus decides to do in October.

I think it’s the relentless constancy of crisis that wears on my soul. When the calendar is blank except for zoom meetings, it’s hard to find something to look forward to. I am blessed and grateful not to be thrust into the fray of horror in our hospitals or managing a business or dealing with the anger of the unmasked. I can hole up in my house, safely removed from the front lines. But knowing the pandemic is always there with no end in sight, at least for now, eats away at my energy and enthusiasm. The checking that we have our masks, the wiping of the grocery cart, and the hesitancy about doing anything with other people makes me feel like I’m walking down a darkened street, always listening for threatening footsteps coming up behind me.

But there are bright spots. We zoom (a lot) with the musical organizations that we love, trying to figure out how to help them survive until this is over. We strategically see a few friends in outside settings. My husband teaches private lessons with a homemade Plexiglas screen separating him from his students, but once school starts, he will go back to virtual lessons. I putter in my garden and kitchen, do little projects and clean-outs around the house, read, swim, and watch good television in the evenings. Next week, I’m doing a virtual live writing class with Anne Lamott, one of my all-time favorite authors. This Sunday, we will go to church, for the first time since March, at the local ballpark. We will sit at socially distanced tables in a now-unused picnic pavilion, but at least we will worship with other people instead of from our living room.

Years ago, I took a seminar on classroom discipline taught by a distinguished retired administrator. I remember him walking in the first day, stepping up to the podium and saying to us in a gracious southern drawl, “When you’re given a bad situation, you have two choices. You can make it better or you can make it worse.” So many times in my life I’ve hearkened back to those words. An over-simplification? Perhaps. But right now, all I can do is choose to make it better for myself and for others, by staying away from the world and much of what I love and by learning to do things in different ways. For however long it takes.