COVID Chronicles

by Joan Rose

LW contributor

Well, folks, we are going into our second year of being trapped at home and being asked to wear masks, and I, for one, am really sick of this pandemic.

Of course, I’ve been fortunate enough not to have actually gotten COVID-19, so I’ve been lucky there, and I guess all our protections have been life-saving, at least for some of us.

So, to keep myself from dying of boredom, I’ve cleaned out my closets and cleaned out the patio and baked myself into a dreaded weight gain. I try to keep busy with writing and painting, but still, when I see a travelogue on TV that shows wonderful trips to some exotic land, I start thinking about how glad I will be when the travel restrictions are lifted and we can travel about, and therefore return to a more normal, mask-less life.

I have traveled some and seen parts of the world such as Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Hawaii and some of the European countries, and of course, I was a lot younger when I took these trips.

Now I am elderly (which is a nice word for really old), and although I would still like to take trips, I have to think about the effects of travel on my health issues and my comfort zone.

Unfortunately, I have a condition that restricts the food I eat. When I was visiting Italy, the seafood, pizzas and pasta looked enticing, but I knew if I gave into temptation and tried this sumptuous food, I would regret it later. Mostly I lived on ham and cheese sandwiches and was happy to have them.

Cruises were another thing that gave me palpitations when I thought of eating aboard ship.

Although cruise food is supposed to be out of this world, to me, mealtime was just something to get through, and I prayed that I didn’t get sick later. The first thing I did whenever our tour bus stopped was to look for a bathroom.

I am also not as active as I once was. When I was younger, I remember going on walking tours in hilly old towns and exclaiming in wonder at the sight of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or Michelangelo’s David in Florence.

Now my walking consists of taking out the trash, and sometimes (if it’s a nice day), I walk around the block. Maybe.

Of course, now in my twilight years, I have a lot more health issues that I have to contend with.

Let’s face it, the body has an expiration date, and I am getting closer to mine. I often read articles about how some 75- and 80-yearolds still travel the world, take cruises and go on biking trips. How I envy them. But personal comfort seems to be taking the place of the travel bug in my mind. Now when I think I’d like to travel, I think of all the things that are uncomfortable for me when I do so, and I put my credit card back in my wallet.

So now I sit in my rocker with the A/C on in the summer and my heater on in the winter, sip my tea, eat a cookie or two, and watch intrepid mountaineers on TV climbing Mt. Everest or sunburned men and women leaping into the air to go parasailing. I find that I am quite content just to watch them and not actually have to get out of my chair.

I think to myself, yes, I’d like to see the Pyramids in Egypt or climb the French Alps, but now I would probably just want to stay on the bus.

I think Dorothy was right—there is no place like home.