PRIME SEASON
Boomer
in a box
Eliz abeth Morse Read
I’m a senior citizen who quite happily lives alone in a very small cottage near the ocean. My income is fixed, my needs are few, and I try to live sustainably and cheerfully. Sometimes I grow vegetables, but this year I’m working on expanding my bee-and-butterfly gardens. I’m vegan (although I will eat fish), I don’t own a cellphone, and I wear one of those nifty Life Alert pendants in case I get lost in my backyard.
No matter the weather, I spend my days moving at my own pace, hopping back and forth from cooking to writing articles to reading Nordic Noir mysteries to calling my friends to binge-watching CNN. I drive a 2006 Hyundai with 36,000 miles on it, and never leave my house in the early morning without a detailed shopping list. Then I come home and take a nap. So when the curtains suddenly dropped on “normal” life with the stay-at-home order, I didn’t see where it would really change my daily rhythms all that much, seeing as I already lived like a hermit. But a funny thing happened along the way…
12
S ou th C oast P r ime T imes
J uly /A ugust 2020
COVID-19: the all-purpose excuse Okay, I’ve gotten used to not being able to find toilet paper, hand sanitizer or Clorox wipes, but why can’t I find things like bulbs of garlic, pipe cleaners, or tofu? Who on earth is hoarding all the tofu? When I ask what the problem is, I’m told, “All the shipments are screwed up due to COVID-19.” So, instead of leaving my house to shop quickly at one store, I end up doing the bar-hopping version, going from one store to another, trying to find what I need. And, for someone who recycles religiously, I’m suddenly drowning in plastic bags and
