Pandemic Memories, Four Years Later

By Natalya Bucuy, Cardinal Managing Editor

“We can get through this together.” The words dance around the painted rainbow. I make a mental note that my rainbow painting skills have not improved since fifth grade. I make another mental note to let myself off the hook. In times like these, only the message matters. I taped the rainbow poster to my apartment window, the one that faces Main Street. After, when I go for walks around town, I spot others like it and smile, instantly connecting with the people who also questioned their painting skills and posted homemade rainbows in their windows.

This is what we did in 2020. Doylestown Strong. 

During the pandemic, as we adjusted to the strange idea of a “new normal” we sought connection everywhere we could. We went on “socially distanced” walks. We participated in not-so-happy happy hours where everyone drank alone in the rooms with the boxes of faces on our screens doing the same thing. We joined social media groups for cooking and sourdough baking and exchanged recipes when we wished we could exchange hugs. 

Any pocket of our wardrobe contained a mask and we accidentally created “pandemic art” as clusters of them hung from the rearview mirrors in our cars. We supported local businesses as much as we could, shopping for puzzles and loungewear via video platforms and dining al fresco. 

And we waited for the collective experience of uncertainty to pass. We endured loneliness, wide-open calendars, discoveries, adjustments. We faced endless Zoom calls, random shortages of essential products, new hobbies, sicknesses, searches for positivity, news, news, and more news. And here we are four years later. What do we take away besides memories?

Too often a discussion about the pandemic leads to a heated political debate. There is little reason for that. Regardless of how one personally experienced the pandemic and all the events associated with it, we can all agree on one thing: It. Was. Hard. 

Decades from now, as we recall our perceptions of the events to our great-grandchildren, we will tell them how hard it was. But as the years take away the sting of physical, emotional, and mental hardship we endured during the pandemic, our memory will give us a gift. It will remind us how closely we clung together. 

We’ll remember how we gathered in small groups. When the authorities attempted to close down Peace Valley Park, people jumped the barriers. Never in our lives were we so eager to go for a walk. A gathering around a fire pit, where musician friends played music and we sang in unison, served as medicine for our social isolation. Videos of Italians singing on their balconies, families arranging drive-by birthday celebrations, and daily honoring of the essential workers gave us hope. And that kept us going. 

Four years later, I can still visualize those colorful letters crowding around my imperfect rainbow. “We can get through this together.” And we did. My rainbow stayed in the window for months, outliving the lockdowns, until one day, it fell off. I had grown so used to it, I squinted when the additional light suddenly poured in. When we take the darkness for granted, the light surprises us.