Living and learning in this strange pandemic spring

It’s as though some great bully has shoved us back into a darker, lifeless time

For years, we’ve been lucky enough to spend a hunk of the winter in Florida. It’s not that the Sunshine State is better than Ontario, it’s just that in the cold months, Florida is — how to say this nicely? — warmer. No judgment or anything, it’s just that we, um, prefer it over snowflakes, slippery roads and the minus-whatever temps, like a billion or so other snowbirds. Pretty much every year we take a cheap, return flight from Buffalo, and then, come spring, make the same trip back home. Every year but this one. This year we drove back.

It’s not that we like the long drive especially, but the flight thing scared us. By driving, at least, we argued, we wouldn’t get coughed on by a stranger; we were in control. As much of course as we have control anywhere in our lives.

The drive was — just to show you how I can master the obvious — interesting. I have three pretty clear memories of the trip.

First, we’d purchased a new satellite radio channel that played (and let us sing to) the music of our lives, the 70s, 80s especially. It was the forties music that was especially engaging, though: those WW2 songs — strangely sad, evocative, hopeful. I’ll tell you why in a minute.

Second, there were lots of things to point out on our three-day ride: the lack of cars; the number of grocery trucks going north to feed us; the almost-vacant hotels; the empty parking lots in shopping malls; the roadside signs that flashed, “Stay at Home!”

Third and most importantly, there was this. When we left, it was high spring in Florida, almost-summer. The week before, my walks were full of new plants, birds and animals (when I was a kid I thought you called that stuff Flora and Fonda, like Jane’s dad. I digress though). I even saw an alligator on one walk, maybe seven feet long, in one of the ponds near us.

As we drove, we passed progressively through lush Georgia and the Carolinas; through West Virginia and its more upscale cousin, Virginia; through industrious Pennsylvania and virus-stricken New York; and then home. Kilometre by kilometre, there were fewer leaves on the trees, fewer wild flowers on the roadside. Less and less green painting the hills. Probably fewer birds out there too, though being locked in the car made it hard to tell. By the time we got to Ontario, there was no sign of spring: no leaves on the tree, no flowers (a few maybe, frightened-looking pansies, a bit of forsythia, some tentative daffodils); a gray-brown landscape.

This was spring in reverse, as though a giant hand had reversed time. As though the sun came up in the west and set in the east. As though clocks ran backwards.

It’s happening to us now, isn’t it? Apart from the terrible loss of life that we read about and many have suffered, there’s the sense that something big is not quite right. No restaurants open except for those that offer home delivery or pickup. Little or no human contact. Businesses closed. Schoolyards empty. Even, sad to say, my local Tim Hortons

is closed. Although I realize it’s a first-world complaint, that one thing has bothered me, made me angry for the young people who worked there, laid off. Frightened.

All of it, as though some great bully has shoved us back into a darker, lifeless time. Like winter, the thing we don’t like. The thing we try to avoid.

I have to admit it’s not all bad. There’s less garbage in the creek beside us, less traffic noise. There’s more time to reflect. There’s the realization that friendships don’t have to be all physical and huggable. Last week for example, we videochatted (who knew you could do that?) with great friends; they live just down the (virtual) street in New Zealand. Saw their new house. Decided we should do this more regularly.

And on yesterday’s walk here at home, I saw a robin. Oh, and more daffodils, not at all tentative but proud, braving the chill. Even a couple of neighbours, six feet away, stopping to talk briefly. Signs of spring.

And I remembered a song we heard on the road back home, Frank Loesser’s musical message to us from eight decades ago, during a war that must have seemed endless. “Spring will be a little late this year,” he wrote. Sad, evocative, even hopeful. Like now.

Dave Davis, MD, is a retired family doc and medical educator. His first novel, “A Potter’s Tale,” published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA and the US. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.com.