COVID truly started for me late one Friday afternoon in March of 2020, when I walked home from work and paused at a favorite pizza joint to pick up something for dinner. It was a Friday. We’d just had a staff meeting at the library. On Monday, we would all return to clean out our offices and prepare for an absence — no more than a month, we expected. That’s how long the library had closed during the 1918 pandemic.

The pizza joint was, to my relief, empty. I went in, ordered, and only a minute later a crowd of teenage girls came in, chattering, laughing, and, it seemed to me, oblivious. I moved away, stood as far back as I could. When my order was called out, I edged very carefully through them to pick up my pie, staring straight ahead. They were nice girls, bubbly and easygoing, and they moved aside without me having to ask, but only as was then usual — just a step or two as they talked to each other over my head. This was before masks were widely used. I felt naked.

Over the weekend, we all received another email. We would not be going back on Monday. Many of us did not not even re-enter the building for over a year.

And so began a weird patch of time snipped out of all our lives. This diary was part of a thread of diaries started on a large online writer’s workshop. It was a way for members to reach out, stay connected, and keep track of each other.

It’s long gone, now, but it helped.