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I don't know where to begin, but I have plenty to write about. This is my story about the COVID-19, pandemic, which began in Wuhan China in the latter part of 2019. It's funny that the library asked for stories of people living in Bath; I had actually thought maybe I should write about it in a journal somewhere for later generations. This will do though.
As you probably have gathered, I live in Bath, in the suburbs. I have 2 children, one of which is school-age. She started Kindergarten last fall; she is young and doesn't understand what is going on, that we have a pandemic and she cannot go to school. I guess that's the area where that's been the biggest impact on our immediate lives. I have coped with that by putting together little educational plans for my daughter, which most of them she loves. I utilize the educational resources that the library has to offer, the elementary school librarian puts out on their webpage each day, and Facebook groups, as well as my own research. Here I'm getting a bit ahead of myself and not starting at the beginning.
The beginning of my story begins when an ex-marine friend of mine tipped me off, that the epidemic was real, it was coming, and warned me that I should prepare for the worst case scenario. Don't wait, because shelves will be empty soon. I didn't think too much of it, until another friend, active in the military a half a world away, was also preparing for what was about to happen. Two days later, I found myself in Walmart, buying what we'd need in case of an emergency, in case we were stuck were we were for 2 weeks, or, heaven forbid, there wasn't anything on store shelves.
I had bought my provisions just in time. I don't think it was a week and we started seeing people flocking to stores and buying everything in sight. This was just before the pandemic got bad. At that point, Maine still didn't have any cases of COVID-19.
Then on March 14, right after dinner, I get a robocall saying that the school would be closed until March 27th. Everything just seemed to downhill from there. It was weird...I started receiving notifications that libraries were starting to close to the public. On March 16, I started dreading text messages, as they would only be the bearer of bad news. The Head Start and WIC office had closed. The next day, I learned that the library had closed.
I think that was the day I decided to walk up to the school for some stuff. I noticed that the streets were mostly empty, with maybe one or two cars going by, and the mailman making his rounds. I was overcast, and gloomy. With my overactive imagination, I likened the whole experience to a zombie apocalypse.
During the time all this was going on, I was watching the news and special reports like crazy, trying to glean new information on COVID-19 and will continue to do so, although watching too much is a bit bad for you. I need to be informed so I can inform other people.
I have also been monitoring how many cases we had in the USA. I watched as the numbers went from a few hundred to now, which is over 100,000. This is frightening.
There are a lot of businesses downtown that have closed down in response of the COVID-19 pandemic. Restaurants are delivery, curbside, or take-out only. A couple of days ago, Shaw's starting limiting how many shoppers were allowed inside the store at one time. These are strange times we are living in. Employees can't seem to keep store shelves stocked.
Right now, we are starting to get used to our new normal, if you can call it that. I am anticipating getting my daughter all settled for online learning soon, since I been informed that school will be closed until April 26.
The new normal involves a lot of online interaction. There are now more online meetings, especially via Zoom, than before. My son gets to attend story time for toddlers via Facebook. Thank goodness for librarians, because they are heroes in this pandemic too. I miss the library, but I'm able to get e-books from Cloud Library, and if I need anything, the staff at the library is only an email away. I think I've done 2 Facebook live chats with friends.
We are nowhere near done with this pandemic. I don't know if it will get any worse; I've never been through anything like this. It's rough, but we will get through this. After the pandemic is over and we can get back to the way our lives were before all this madness and uncertainty, I'm looking forward to an interview at the library downtown and getting my hair cut.
Charity Williams