Tsunami, 40 & 41. A Year

It's been a year.

A year since the first state of alarm that locked us inside our homes. 

I remember the growing anxiety over the spreading contagion last March, but still couldn't believe one of my students when he said he had heard school would be closed within a week. There were few people in our region who had contracted Covid. Yet, the weekend after we had marched in the Women's Day protest in Santiago, we were all shut up inside our private enclosures. Those who lived in flats couldn't even go out on communal patios or roof terraces. 

To prepare for the lockdown, people went shopping. And emptied supermarket aisles. Anyone seen with the last packet of toilet paper in the entire supermarket, was set upon, in good, WWE fashion. People who usually went shopping every other day, suddenly had two or three carts in the queue. Some, experts after having watched zombie movies and movies about the siege of Leningrad and Stalingrad enough times, knew to head for the canned goods. Others, not so trained, are probably still digging things out of the bottom of their freezer, and wondering why they bought five kilos of overly ripe salad tomatoes. Overnight, everyone was a prepper, and not even AA batteries or rubbing alcohol could be found for love or money. 

Lack of face masks made people wrap up in the strangest substitutes, including plastic bags with holes cut out for eyes. Suddenly, we were all afraid of our neighbors, and berated them when they passed us in the hallway without hugging the opposite wall as if they were Spiderman. The merest touch of a stranger led some to take a disinfection bath almost immediately.  

People who didn't know what a gigabyte was, were suddenly uploading videos of themselves on internet. Many were of them showing off recipes. The tummies gained in those two months are still on a diet. Others were of them turning their houses into gyms. Some of them are still paying for the repairs. Then, the more imaginative ones, made humorous skits. Elayne Boosler's and Chris Rock's careers are not in danger. 

Children were suddenly being homeschooled with the help of computers. Some, those who had a good internet connection, and computer-savvy teachers and parents, actually learned something. Those that didn't, enjoyed the rest of the school year torturing their grown-ups with, "I don't know how to do this. Tell me how," handing their parents a print out of fifth grade math operations parents had hoped to have left forever behind years ago. "You're holding it upside down," was probably a common complaint among young students whose parents had forgotten the difference between a dividend and a denominator (so have I). That explains why this year, teachers are still teaching Unit 2 instead of Unit 4 at this point in the school year.

Lucky ones who had office jobs got to stay home. And work. From a standard office environment, many went to a standard home environment. If, before, it was coffee break that was a hazard most bosses hated, now it was everything else. From, "Mummy, Daddy, look what I made!" to strange crashes where the toddler had been suspiciously quiet. Zoom meetings where an indiscretion of the camera revealed to all your sexy underwear. Or the entrance of a partner who had just come out of the shower without realizing they were on Candid Camera. Or the bouncing entrance of the dog, thinking he's being called. Or a cat that decides the keyboard is the perfect place for a nap, and makes everything go black by stepping on the Escape key.

Dogs. Never have so many dogs been acquired nor so many taken for walks. It was one of the few reasons people could leave their homes, and dog adoptions skyrocketed. Even temporary adoptions among neighbors. "Who took out the dog last?" "One B. But Three C asked first." From happily jumping at the door, some dogs went to hiding under a bed or in a closet as soon as they heard their name called, and the tinkle of a leash.

Our daughter, who was in Santiago then, decided to stay there. It was only going to be for two weeks, after all. Then, those two weeks became four, then six. Then, when it seemed we were all going to start killing each other out of desperation, we were finally allowed to exercise outside. Long distance runners were born. Though not very long distance, since we weren't allowed to run further than a kilomenter away from home. People whose only exercise had been changing the TV channel with the remote for years, were suddenly huffing and puffing in an attempt to get out of the house for an approved activity, just to avoid looking at the same walls they once wished they could look at all day without having to go out to work. 

The saddest part of the entire year has been the gradual disappearance of an entire generation of people. Many of those Spaniards who died had suffered through the Civil War as children, then through the famine that followed it. They suffered poverty, censure, a dictatorship. This pandemic didn't allow them to reach their natural end, surrounded by loved ones. Those that died, died alone, mostly in hospitals, where the only companionship was of overworked nurses and doctors, that took a moment to help them out of this world with a loving word. That was our greatest loss.

Those same doctors and nurses, so lauded in that first wave, seem to have been forgotten in the succeeding months. But they have paid with stress, sleepless days and nights, and tears. Their hard work this year will bring them many scars that will last the rest of their lives, as they remember how they battled this illness, trying to save everyone they treated. The least we could do for them is try to avoid getting sick. The least the regional governments can do, is stop treating them like disposable workers. 

Maybe, if Europe finally buys enough vaccines, by the end of autumn we can say we've beaten this thing. Some day, many of us can look back at these couple of years, and tell our grandchildren tall tales of how we saved humanity by lying on the couch. And by hoarding toilet paper.

Life continues.