Coronavirus winter – hope hurts…

Spring starts two weeks today, so we’re entering the final stages of this coronavirus winter. And it’s just over a year ago, on February 28^th 2020, that the first restrictions here in Switzerland took hold – carnival balls and processions were cancelled, along with all other mass events.

Ah well, we thought. Next year. Ha. We haven’t had a mass event since, and when they’ll start again is anyone’s guess.

Next weekend  is Son 1’s birthday. Last year the birthday celebration plans were downsized to lunch à trois on a restaurant terrace on a pretty chilly day.

Ah well, we thought. Next year. Ha. This year’s restrictions are even tougher (and quite right too).

Some things we know we’ll laugh about, later. Next year? Hm… If anyone had told me last March that I’d choose to keep my face mask on for the 25-minute walk home from Coop, because at minus 12°C with a stiff north wind adding to the chill factor, wearing my mask was a whole lot more comfortable than taking it off, well, I might not have believed them. And if they’d told me I’d be halfway home from Aldi on a perfectly nice spring day before realising I hadn’t taken my mask off, I definitely wouldn’t have believed them. And if you started to make a list of all the things we haven’t done for over a year now – but that’s a seriously bad idea.

And yet there’s hope – the vaccines, the game-changers, the things that have turned this marathon into a waiting game. But that can be hard to deal with too, because hope hurts. Dark thoughts circle at 3am. What if it goes wrong? What if the vaccine stops working? What if a new variant starts everything up again and the prospect of normal life is snatched away? Good sense returns at 7am and we know there’d be a way out of all those scenarios, but still…

The waiting game continues, and it’s my grandmother who helps me most these days. She’s long gone now, but she lived through WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic as well as WWII, and I don’t remember her ever moaning about any of them. They all became memories afterwards while she concentrated on living her life.

And that’s what we have to do, too. Let’s restart the roaring twenties – next year?