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We are a retired couple who have lived in our same tranquil lake community home for over 35 years. We have participated in many community and large nonprofit organizations over the decades that included women’s organizations, environmental groups, lake associations, veterans’ groups, cultural and historic societies and volunteer community emergency teams that helped with pop up shelters during bad storms. On the shopping side we have become enrolled in shopping club memberships to local businesses both large and small.
One of us currently volunteers in Manhattan at the Intrepid Sea Air & Air Space Museum. We got the first mandatory warnings the pandemic had arrived in the New York Metro area when there was a sudden dismissal of volunteers to return home on March 12th and the next day a full closure of the Museum.
Both of us have had a career with technical research projects at various AT&T locations in New Jersey. This has both of seeing things from a problem and resolution perspective for alternative solutions. We both experienced initial sadness that we could not attend our social places anymore that enriched our retirement lives both with the museum and the Sussex County YMCA. We both got involved in the programs these places offered and now they were suddenly pulled away from us. However, these dilemmas allowed the wisdom of our past career experience to kick in. We started to consider the resources, technology and human networks we built up over the years. We started to take advantage of club membership online shopping that was tied to Instacart delivery to the home. All the gift online food companies we used in the past for relatives out of state, we were now putting in orders for ourselves. The New Jersey winery we visited on weekend day trips – The Four Sisters Winery (908 475-3671) now offered new shipment deals to the home which gave us back the joy of a glass a wine with dinner.
We slowly got back to meeting up with friends in our favorite organizations on ZOOM meetings or Facebook Live. Now our old friends were included in the group of locked in at home and lonely. This presented an opportunity of uninterrupted lengthy old-fashioned phone conversations (not chats). We were still able to help our favorite local animal nonprofit – Hopatcong Pound Project Safehouse (973 479 3659) by having our donated items picked up from our home doorstep. We called our favorite florist and garden center Presto Flowers (973-810-2911). They told us to send an email of what we are looking for our spring gardening projects. They would be able to price out the order, take our credit card over the phone and make deliveries to our home. Through this, Presto Flowers still managed to have a safe sanitized indoor drop off bin for donations to our church food bank – Hopatcong Westside Methodist Church (973 398 0846) and rewarded those giving with some fresh cut flowers while she had extra flowers on hand. Presto Flowers has often helped sponsor school fund raising drives and now they were adding support to food drives with church groups.
The most important feature in our home is our glass storm door. I can still meet and greet my neighborhood Avon rep with a taped check at the on the door and a drop off delivery. We have greeted many other neighbors at our front door. They are the ones who will drop milk and bread off while we are waiting for a big delivery of food supplies. One of those good neighbors is a young man who requested my writing experience to be an admin for a three county Facebook group page he created. I was flattered to be the only senior member of his group. It has helped me to be in touch with the issues younger generations have in confronting this pandemic.
Life is still good behind a glass door and even nicer when you have a backyard garden. This brings us much gratitude for what we have during this uniquely challenging time. We also learned to accept sending our sympathies and eulogies to a virtual gathering place and are just waiting to give each other hugs along with drying some tears.
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