As our everyday lives have been upended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, like all of you, I am no longer able to do many of things I enjoy most.
For me, there are no more family trips to the lake in Hot Springs, Ark., browsing antique stores and book stores, or scheduling play dates for my six-year-old son.
My husband and I love to entertain, especially in the spring when it is cool enough to enjoy time on our screened porch and patio. However, the past two months, there have been no supper club dinners or book club meetings or barbeques or crawfish boils with family and friends. Our annual Kentucky Derby Party has been postponed until September, and trips to see my sisters in Southaven and Destin, Fla., are on hold indefinitely.
Like most of you, the things I enjoy most are spending time with other people, and that is what this pandemic has taken away from our everyday lives. That is what hits most of us the hardest. Not seeing my sisters regularly has been a struggle, but we keep FaceTime hot on our cellphones.
In looking at all that is going on, I’ve noticed little things I miss that I never expected I would. I miss hugs, which is really a big deal for me. Prior to working at the Make-A-Wish Foundation, I wasn’t a “hugger.” You try telling grown women dressed as princesses you don’t wish to be hugged and see who wins. You end up squashed between 10 of them in a free-for-all bear hug.
Southerners are affectionate people, and we have to show love to just about everyone we know. We hug everyone – people in the grocery stores, at the boutiques, in church. I was shopping not too long ago and a woman I never met introduced herself with a hug. I felt like I’ve known her forever.
The week after the social distancing was put into place, I met Carroll County’s elected officials at the Carrollton Courthouse to take a group photograph. As we gathered, everyone looked so uncomfortable – not knowing exactly what to say or do without hugging someone’s neck or giving a firm handshake. It felt like everyone was mad about something, although they weren’t. It was just an awkward acknowledgement of how very different life is today.
I also miss attending court with full galleries and government meetings and civic meetings. I told my husband that COVID-19 has taken away the most enjoyable parts of my job as a journalist. Funny thing, I don’t know if I realized they were the most enjoyable parts of my job until they were gone.
Interviewing people face-to-face for a feature story or watching the board of aldermen interact with each other or sitting in court as the judge makes his rulings before an audience brings a different aspect to the stories I write. I am able to share that experience with our readers in a way that can only be done by personal observation.
I miss attending Winona Rotary Club meetings, and waving to fellow “late arrival” parents as I drop my son off at school. I miss working with other business leaders to resurrect the Winona Business Association (we will succeed, I say!), and I miss having special events to look forward to attending in the community.
I asked some of my friends on social media some of the things they miss and never imagined they would.
Tonya Blakely said she missed smiling at people, now that people are wearing masks in public. It just doesn’t have the same effect while wearing a mask. Kimberly Smith said she missed hugging people as well, especially people in her church family now that services are done remotely. Missing hugs was mentioned by the majority of people who commented.
Ronnie King said she missed hugging as well, but she also missed shopping for pleasure instead of for necessity. My aunt, Pat Brown, said she missed going to the grocery store, something I’ve never been fond of, especially on those big-haul-type visits.
Many people miss eating inside restaurants, attending spring sporting events like baseball games, working out at the gym, visiting the hair salon, and visiting the public library. My friend Catherine Anne Haynes said she missed taking her son, Wyatt, to football practice at his school, and Jennifer Parson said she missed youth baseball with her children at the Winona Recreational Park.
Heather Rodgers, a speech pathologist at Winona Elementary School, said she misses the structure of a routine, and Libby Carson, culinary arts teacher at the Winona Career and Technical Center, said she misses her students.
Emily Branch, a teacher at Marshall Elementary School, said she missed her students because “I feel like they have been ripped away from me during such an important time in their lives.”
The majority of people said they missed attending church and Sunday school in person, something they never imagined they would not be able to do. Dr. Bernard Taylor said, “I never dreamed that in America in my lifetime I would not be able to attend church.”
Shoni Montgomery said she missed visiting people in the hospital, which is especially hard as she is expecting her first grandchild soon.
Becky Dees said she missed something “she never imagined she would,” attending visitation and funerals of friends and loved ones.
“I miss getting to go to the funeral home for visitation and to the funeral when a friend or family member has a death in the family,” she said. “They need the hugs, encouragement, and visual signs of love and support that this virus denies us of giving.”
And then we have those who are graduating from high school and college this year. Our seniors have missed out on so many rites of passage – award banquets, senior skip day, college visits, prom, baccalaureate, and likely commencement exercises.
Elizabeth Eldridge said she missed getting to witness the “last” times of her grandson’s senior year, and Russell Wilson said he missed the “countless activities during the last nine months of my [senior] son.” Linda Tompkins also is sad to miss seeing her grandsons graduate this year.
The coronavirus has most definitely changed our everyday lives, and we will miss those little freedoms we often took for granted prior to the pandemic.
Sharon Kent said it best when asked what she missed that she never would.
“I miss taking things for granted,” she said.
