From the Anthology
Pandemic Reflections: Five Years Later
2020 was a year that excavated deep, exposed everything underneath — fear, loss, absurd joy, deep fractures, and unexpected moments of grace. When the pandemic shut everything down, time lost its shape. Plans were canceled — even the local primary election where I was signed up to work as poll worker was cancelled by the Governor’s orders. I remember a kind of relief at the cancellation when my co-workers and I greeted with an elbow bump and lingered outside the glass double doors of the school where elections usually happened. But in that suspended space of abandoned plans we pivoted to work from home, Zoom writing classes, eating-at-home with family, creating safety pods of friends, baking sourdough and finding community in sharing the starter, bought e-bikes and collectively gained weight in spite of buying up treadmills in record volume. And yeah, who can forget our obsession for stock piling toilet rolls!
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A Second Chance at Parenthood.
The lockdown gave me an unexpected second chapter with my daughter. She had flown the nest two years earlier, but quarantine sent her home — puppy and all. Suddenly, the house was alive again, filled with the barking of two large dogs and the buzz of her energy.
Her 21st birthday loomed in April 2020 — a milestone she had long fantasized about: ordering a drink at a bar, legally, with her real ID. We couldn’t give her that experience in the world, so we recreated it at home. My husband donned a bartender’s apron, and our butcher block counter replaced the kitchen lights with black lights and a neon sign which blinked “Welcome to Club Quarantine” with an epithet, “21 and over only”, complete with custom coasters, a drink menu, and one truly unforgettable (and awful) signature Pink Whitney, it is pink lemonade flavored Vodka touted by a podcast Splitting Chiclets with a gaping-hockey-helmet-skull as their logo. It was her request — like that high school obsession when she wanted to go to Wales and buy Welsh pants, completely random, totally 21, and now a cherished family legend.
We invited one friend from our quarantine pod and the rest joined via Zoom. Drinks were shaken and spilled and set deliberately on fire to create a birthday worthy drama in drinks. We made a Flaming Dr. Pepper with the only beer we had — Great Lakes Brewery — and regretted not using college-era Natty Light when the hops clashed terribly with the amaretto.
My daughter showed up 15 minutes before midnight and was denied entry to Club Quarantine — my husband now a bouncer checked her ID, and she wasn’t 21 yet!
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Mortality and the Call from India
But behind the birthday lights, dread lived in the corners. Every call from India brought panic. My brother and his family got COVID, and for days I was consumed by fear. My mother, in the same house, remained untouched, but a high school classmate who once held a sweet place in my heart died — along with his wife and two sons.
I fell into a three-day funk. The helplessness of knowing I couldn’t travel — couldn’t be there if something happened — haunted me. That distance became more than geographic. It became emotional, spiritual, historical and most importantly cultural. Could relationships survive that kind of gulf? The truth is some didn’t. Maybe they weren’t meant to. All while the world spun wild with headlines that turned out so wrong and one started to question fundamental concepts such as “freedom”, “Democracy”, and even “Truth”.
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Fractures Within and Without
The pandemic didn’t just crack the world; it pulled families apart like a giant magnet sorting shard of metal. Our family in Ohio fractured along lines already faintly drawn — politics, pride, fear. Masks became symbols of allegiance rather than simple safety tools. Debates about vaccines and health became fights about identity.
Our last Thanksgiving together was a strange mosaic of masked, distanced pods. I recited a Sanskrit shloka before dinner, quietly staking a claim to my place at the table. My brother-in-law had thanked Jesus; I followed with my own prayer. Not in protest, but in presence. I had spent 20 years blending in. That night, I wanted to step out, unmask a little.
The Weight of the World and the Escape of Art
I started writing poetry. A Zoom-poet group became my lifeline. As Dr. Amy Acton spoke on TV about flattening the curve, I wrote lines about curves of memory, of grief, of hope and where I was from. The world argued over science while I clung to verse. The uncertainty was existential — economic, emotional, legal. The disparity of how pandemic affected the marginalized and underprivileged was soul crushing. On the other hand, the house truly felt like home. Safety enclosed in the four walls, sheltering from loved ones, and found family, time available to nurture a kitchen garden. Jasmine in the pots bloomed the best that year.
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Now in 2025.
I look back and see that year as a kind of crucible. Relationships I thought were strong dissolved. Some grew stronger. I learned what being there truly means — not just presence, but presence with intent, with honesty.
Some connections didn’t survive. Some should never have. But the memories — of kitchen bars, flaming drinks, painful phone calls, and Sanskrit prayers — remain. That year carved itself into me. And I carry it forward, still trying to understand what was lost, what was saved, and what it all means now.
Sujata was born in India and spent an idyllic childhood at her maternal grandparent's home and with her immediate family in a steel town called Bhilai in the central province of India, an organized city surrounded by thick tropical forest carved out by displacing indigenous tribal communities. She immigrated to Cleveland to study Molecular Biology and has published work in Scientific Journals. Her interest in creative writing intensified during the Covid lockdown. Presently, she is finalizing a poetry collection with themes of "in-between-ness." She is on the board for two not-for-profits, Literary Cleveland and Vitamix Foundation. Instagram: @Slakhing.
