Spring has sprung and deer saunter through my neighborhood

eating the tulips. On walks with my dog, I see them grazing in front yards and hurry past, afraid they'll see us and attack. Okay, not attack, exactly, but what if one of them startles and bolts and slams into me or tramples the dog? I've seen them do that before. Not slam or trample, but startle and bolt. Once, on a walk with my daughter, 

when she and her dog were living here earlier in the pandemic, we saw a deer run, gallop, race--I don't know the proper deer-in-action lingo, but trust me, it was fast!-- as it crossed the street. "Oh my god," I said to my daughter after the danger had passed and the deer was casually munching on tulips in a different front yard, "that thing could've killed us!" 

She looked at me with a mixture of amusement and concern. Both dogs hadn't even noticed the deer. Which just goes to show... something. I'm easily startled? Readily spooked? It's true, my nervous system tends to be set on high alert. Especially during the pandemic. Are we still in the pandemic? Yes, no, maybe? At the library I have stopped wearing my mask, although several of my co-workers and some of the patrons wear theirs. 

A friend tells me she is a One Way Masker, and I like that description. I do still wear my mask when I am in crowded indoor places with dubious air quality. Not that I go into such places often. I got the fourth shot at the advice of my doctor. I took two home tests last week, worried that my allergies were maybe... not? 

Two years and nearly two months after This Whole Thing Started, it seems like those of us who've made it through unscathed, are weary, fending for ourselves, trying to pick up where we left off, but I don't know

can we? 

Sometimes I wonder if I am more scathed than I realize. The solution--and this I've learned after much trial and error--is escaping (into books, movies, binge-watching TV shows about people throwing pottery) and doing something physical (yoga, carrying books up and down the stairs at the library because the elevator is broken) and going outside (to walk the dog, dig up weeds, plant seeds). It is also, a dear friend reminded me recently, about connection and community. 

And speaking of seeds and connection and community, here is something lovely we are offering at our library. A seed exchange. 

How it works is you take a packet or two of seeds, and if you have extra seeds of your own, you can give some back. 

"But what if people just take the seeds," a patron asks me, "and never give anything back?" 

"I don't know," I tell her. "We have additional seed packets in our workroom. Other people will give back more. It'll all work out." 

She looks doubtful, but I know I'm right. At night I walk the dog and spy a deer in someone's front yard. I freeze, but the deer keeps munching as if we are not even here. The dog and I scurry by, unscathed.  

Bare-faced Brunch

It's almost spring, never mind the snow on the ground. The pandemic is over, everybody says. Today I am going out to brunch with a friend. 

Yesterday my husband and I ran errands like we used to in the Before Times. Columbus lifted the mask mandate a few days ago, but my library has hung onto our masks-required-for-employees rule until tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Errand number one is the post office, and I see a guy walking out bare-faced and decide, Oookay, here I go, mask-less myself. But when I walk inside, the handful of people in line are masked and so is the clerk, although, she's wearing hers like a chin strap. I fumble my mask out of my purse and put it on, and when I reach the counter, the clerk's got hers on properly too. I don't know what to make of this. Peer pressure? 

Errand two is the pet store to buy the ridiculously expensive pet food we serve to our dog, who let me tell you has a very sensitive stomach and every time we go into the place and the cashier rings it all up, I can feel my husband tensing beside me and I remind him of the crazy high emergency vet bill we paid a few months ago and this is the food they recommended and we both take a breath under our masks, except this time, we're not wearing masks. 

We decided on the car ride over that we'd go with the flow, based on what the employees are required to do. 

No masks, on any of them. It's like this for the remainder of our errands, everything back to normal with the bare faces, but jarring to me. I realize that in most parts of the country (Tennessee, for example, where we visited my husbands' parents recently) the pandemic was Declared Over long ago. But up here in our little Columbus bubble, many of us are still paying attention to case counts and hospitalizations and the death rate. For example, for the past two weeks in Ohio, ninety-one people died every day from Covid. 

Which seems high? Except it's so much lower than the several hundred people a day average from last month, so we're all good now? I guess? 

When this is all over, a friend told me way back at the beginning, I never want to think about it again. I don't want to write about it. I don't want to read about it. As soon as it's over, I'm done. 

Well, yeah, I told her. Me too. For sure. 

Because believe me, I've been there with the wanting to forget, the frantic desire to move on, to let it go, to get on with it. I have been reading books on living through trauma, how it affects the mind, the body. And what has all of This been, but collective, mass trauma? The books have more to say about the After part, the part when the trauma's in the past, or we think it is. But I don't want to get into it with you right now. 

I'm taking a few extra moments to fix my hair before I leave for brunch. Scrounge around in the drawer where I keep my earrings.  Dab on a bit of make up, the first time I've done this in two years. Out the door and just watch me, I'll be baring my face like the best of them.