Keeping your own History of the Covid-19 Pandemic – My latest on Catholicmom.com

My granddaughter and I were looking at a book about the solar system when we found a page on Haley’s comet. I told her that when the comet came by in 1986, I went out to a nearby lake with the astronomy club so that I could see the big event. I waited in line for over an hour to see a little, dull, blurry thing in the telescope. I thought the entire experience was quite a let down.

But it hadn’t been that way when my own grandma saw it in 1910. Grandma told me stories of how bright the comet was when she was a little girl. It was so bright that it confused the chickens in their hen house because it lit up the night sky. When I shared this with my granddaughter, she had many questions. She wanted to know when Haley’s comet it was coming again (around 2061) and how old she will be (50!) and if we can go back to the lake and see it together. I will be 104, but I told her that if I’m still alive, and if I can still see, we’ll go together!

She asked me lots of other questions too about what my grandma thought of the comet and what kind of food they had at their comet parties. Did they even have comet parties?  Most of these questions I could only take a guess at. My grandma didn’t write anything down and I only remember what she told me. As far as that goes, I didn’t write anything down about my own sighting of the comet when I was 26 either.

All of that started to make me think about this unique time in our lives right now. This is the worst pandemic in my lifetime and the response to it has certainly been widespread and unique with consequences that have affected everyone we know. Shouldn’t we be writing and recording our experiences as we live through this part of history?

Read the rest here.