I’m a privileged person. I admit it freely. So many others have serious, life threatening or at least life-damaging problems these days. Hell, all the time. And I have so few things to complain about in Coronavirus Days. I’m lucky, well-fed, safe and well.

Having said all that, I’m in pain. My grandchildren Wyatt and Mia are ages almost five and almost three, and they are  going to be in a wedding. Wyatt is going to be a ring bearer and Mia a flower girl.

It’s tomorrow. Wyatt’s wearing cute little boy dress-up clothes and Mia’s going to be in a fancy raspberry-colored dress. All dressed up, they’re going to walk down the aisle together. Everyone will smile at them. And I won’t be there. I won’t be there for the bathing, dressing, hair combing part at their house. I won’t be there for the photos or videos. I won’t be at the wedding or anywhere near them because I and my husband are vulnerable to Covid 19 and the kids could be carriers. We could get sick and maybe even die if they have been exposed and pass that exposure to us.

Better safe than sorry, my grown children say. But I am sorry. And sad. Crying loudly, tears running down my face sad. Raging that it’s not fair and that I feel punished for something I didn’t do sad.

Just one tiny story of loss in a sea of them, but it’s mine. And I’m hurting today.

Two months now. I think it’s been a little longer since I’ve seen my grandchildren, but I’m using March 15 as the official date that we stopped doing anything away from home that we didn’t absolutely have to do. I voted on the 17th, but extraordinary measures were being taken to clean everything off, and there was a feeling of risk. But no way was I not going to vote.

I remember that at first we were told masks made little difference. And then, suddenly, they were a good thing to do, shortly followed by being mandatory in public places. I have several now and look at all of the ones I see advertised on — well, everywhere. I saw some with velcro and thought what a good idea that was but didn’t buy any.

I’m Zooming. I’m in the early stages of mastering the technology, and nothing has gone smoothly, but eight of my high school girlfriends Zoomed yesterday with only a few glitches. The password, given over and over again, is forever branded into my brain. I might use it the next time I have to change one of mine.

My girlfriends all looked relatively normal but in need of haircuts. They seemed to be handling self-imposed imprisonment fairly well. The stronger the introverted personality, the happier one was with ‘just hanging out with myself’. Eventually the talk got around to Trump and how embarrassed and furious we were with him and how frightened we were for ‘poor old Joe’ that he would shoot himself in the foot with his Vice President choice. We’re in agreement that the anxiety level was already high with everyday a new challenge, and then Covid19 was added. But we’re all tough and tested and ready to deal with whatever comes next.

Connie is reading a book that is calming her down, so I ordered it from my local library, The Soul of America by Jon Meachum. The library has curbside pickup, so when they call me, I’ll go get it. I’m not usually able to stick with non-fiction, but I’ll try–anything to try to foster some hope.

I wrote a bunch of words in the form of a third of a short story and then lost them. It’s frustrating as all get-out to write and then lose what you’ve written. I know I didn’t dream it because I told Ed about it at the dining room table, and then when I went to reread and work on it, poof, all gone.

On the other hand, I found something. Or rather it found me. I’ve developed a family tree on Familysearch, the genealogy program through The Church of the Latter Day Saints. It was/is free, which is the only reason I picked them over Ancestry.com, but I’ve never been disappointed. People can look up your family and message you that they just might be related. That’s what happened. He’s not related to me, but to my husband and my kids, and he’s a part of the branch that so little is known about, my father-in-law. He is the son of my father-in-law’s brother, Stanislaw/Stanley Jablonowski. His name is Alex. He’s an only child eight years younger than I am. He lives in England near the coast and has two children about the ages of my two. He doesn’t like Trump either. We got that out of the way early. If I was going to chat with him and his ‘lovely partner’ Karen, and I am, I wanted to be able to … well be myself.

So, two things lost — first, the time I wanted to be with my grandchildren watching them grow, because every few days it seemed like they had learned new things and added new words to their vocabularies and new skills to their skillset. And, second, some words on a page. And two somethings found —  one, Zoom, and two, a new relative. A Polish/British relative. His father, my husband’s uncle he’s never met, kept his original surname. He kept the ‘ow’ that made the name four syllables. All the siblings who came to America took it out. I wonder when. I bet there’s a story there, but no one is left to tell it.

Stay strong. Stay brave. Stay patient.

“Life has a way of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all, or by having everything happen at once.” Paulo Coelho

PJ