Daily Archives: March 20, 2020

Shh! I snuck out to Trader Joe’s yesterday!

I say “snuck out” because I promised all three of my children that I would stay home all day and write. I agreed with them that since I’m 65, I should stay home, sheltered in place, because that’s what we are all being asked to do where I live. This Corona Virus thing has me good and scared and I completely understand that to stay healthy, it’s best to avoid contact with others.

It’s not like I don’t have plenty to do. I’m in the middle of writing the next chapter in my book, making a quilt and I have a new found desire to bake. But that’s where my troubles began–I needed eggs and butter. That is, I needed eggs and butter if I was going to stay home for the next two weeks, feed my husband breakfast and still bake.

I figured that if I ventured out early enough, I might not run into as many people. So I did and I was right. My beach city was quiet, devoid of crowds, bikes and surfboards. I got dressed and was in line by 9:10. The store had opened at 9:00 and there were already about fifteen people in line ahead of me. Kudos to the pleasant Trader Joe’s staff who kept the store well stocked and the line moving. And kudos to the folks in line who, thankfully, approached the whole event with smiles on their faces. We all made a point of not standing too close together and I’m grateful that I heard neither a cough nor a sneeze.

In thirty minutes I was in and out of the store with lots of good stuff, including eggs and butter. I also left with another unexpected bonus. I met a new character for my book. She is a combination of the three wonderful women who I stood in line with. Total strangers, they shared their good humor as they threw out questions to the crowd like, “How many of you are over sixty and snuck out today?” and comments like, “I won’t tell your kids if you don’t tell mine!” All three were colorful women with infectious smiles who I soon found out were actually as scared as I was to be out and about when we should have been at home. I took all three home with me in my heart and joyfully morphed them into my new character.

These are challenging times for our world and I do not take lightly the recommendations coming out from the CDC and our local health officials. And I must admit that it will be a while before I need or want to venture out to the market or Trader Joe’s again. But, I am grateful to the staff who continue to work so hard to keep our markets full. I also want to extend a personal hurrah to the medical community who are working so tirelessly to get us all through this crisis. I have a first hand view of it as I watch my daughter, who is a nurse, march off to work to keep her cancer patients safe.

Good health and best wishes for an end to this soon!

Meriam