When it comes to preparedness, I’m your boy scout.

I read a verse in Proverbs when I was about 13 – the verse that says, “she is not afraid of the winter, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.” I like red, it’s my favorite color – second only to black. I like sale shopping. So, yes, consider my household clothed for the winter. I like to shop ahead, make sure my / our needs are covered so there is no frantic last-minute push. We are prepared for any emergency. At any given time, there are three little black dresses in my closet. A hiking pack, extra water, PFD and swimsuit stay in the car. My purse holds an emergency sewing kit, measuring tape, wallet knife, and dimes for the potty and payphone. Dimes for the potty? Now there’s a historic artifact.

Anyway, I try to be prepared. But that can also make me overconfident. Yesterday I took my kayak out on the river for the first time this year. I’ve had it on the roof of the car just waiting since April. My kayaking bag is in the hatch. All I really had to do was switch to my swim shorts and drive away from the house and 22 blocks to the put in. A ten-minute drive. Thirteen minutes untying and unloading the kayak and I was in the water blissfully paddling upstream, against the current as usual. Three quarters of the way to my turn around point I realized something: No sunscreen. Blue sky. Sunshine. Swollen river. 80 degree weather. Immediately I was thankful for a sit-in craft – at least the tops of my feet won’t get burned. I took a few more powerful strokes and remembered something else. I usually put moleskin on the thenar webspace between my thumbs and forefingers. Do I feel blisters coming on? Both moleskin and sunscreen are in my daypack – back at the car. So much for my preparedness image.

In much the same way COVID-19 did not catch me unprepared. I was not out of toilet paper. I had food for a couple weeks already in-house. I even had a collection of bandanas to use as masks. Who cares about social distance? I was new in town so there was no one to miss. No reason to repine and whine. I was used to hiking alone and living alone and I’m an introvert. 

But the delayed reaction now, fourteen months later is about to do me in. During the long months of quarantine I practiced piano, I practiced guitar, I learned to play bass, I took some classes by Zoom, but I am woefully out of practice at this social thing. I’m fully vaccinated as are most of those in my would-be peer group, but there is no place to go, no one to see, nothing to do. 14 months later it is time to scramble and catch up with all the things I meant to do when I was new in town. Otherwise I, even I – the loner – will become lonely and blue. Intentional friend-making and job-hunting, inserting myself into the lives and worlds of others has never come easy for me. But delayed loneliness is no laughing matter, folks.