Woster: Is it me, or have the past three years gone by pretty fast?

A snow-covered patio on my phone’s photo memories reminded me that here, like everywhere else in South Dakota, COVID-19 has been part of life for three full years now.

I have that photographic evidence to back that up.

I snapped the photo on March 14, 2020. A few inches of snow overnight had covered patio bricks and chairs and piled on the picnic table under the leaning Ponderosa pine tree. It is a simple but pleasing photo, an illustration for a Robert Frost poem, perhaps.

I snapped the picture to send to our granddaughter, the one who had stayed with us a couple of days before returning to St. Cloud, Minnesota, the previous afternoon. With three college friends, she came to Chamberlain for, well, spring break, a quiet time at Grandma and Grandpa’s off-the-beaten-path home on the river bottom.

I know most college kids don’t travel to a place like Chamberlain for spring break. The hot spots, I gather, are still Fort Lauderdale and other Florida beach towns, along with the South Padre Island in Texas and some resort villages in Mexico. I have read reports of riots and shootings among the spring-break revelers in Florida this year, though, so maybe a quiet river town in South Dakota would be a wise choice.

A person, even a young person, could do worse than my town. Now, I have no interest in my community becoming a spring-break destination for hordes of partying college students. I also know the chance of that happening is slim, indeed. Like that Nebraska tourism slogan, this place is not for everyone. But it is terrific for people who appreciate it.

Well, so our granddaughter and her friends seemed to have a grand time here. The weather was perfect for mid-March, with plenty of sun, no precipitation and hardly any wind. They did some sight-seeing, walked through the cemetery on the river bluffs, had a meal at Al’s Oasis, played board games, talked and laughed. It would have been perfect, except for their phones.

Our granddaughter had recently finished college. Her friends were in the final stages. Their phones began to light up as Minnesota leaders and school officials watched COVID-19 moved across the country and into Minnesota. Should they cancel classes? What about internships? What policies were being considered and when would they be finalized? Our guests were still enjoying their visit, but the outside world, in the form of a frightening, mysterious virus, had intruded. They decided they needed to be back at school as they tried to figure out what the immediate future held for them. They packed up and headed back to St. Cloud, where things were buttoning up quickly.

When I saw my photo of the snowy patio, I looked back and found that on March 10 of 2020, South Dakota confirmed its first five cases of the virus and the first death. It seems forever ago. Sometimes it is difficult to remember a time when COVID was not a part of our lives, when every dry cough, runny nose and headache meant a common cold instead of a possible infection with one of the numerous variants of COVID that we experienced over time.

Like most of South Dakota and much of the country in those early days, Nancy and I hunkered down at home. Pretty much a social misfit, I joked that I had been training my entire life for that moment. Still, I confess it got old, rarely venturing out.

Nancy did the shopping, wearing gloves and a mask, wiping down the sacks when she got home, doing what we were told. Not all of that was necessary, it turned out, but who knew? And who knew that wearing or not wearing a mask would become an aggressive political statement?

We have experienced three years of the virus, 3,200 South Dakota deaths, constant public disagreement over virtually every policy and action associated with COVID.

Sometimes I think I would like to turn the calendar back to that spring break of 2020. Things were about to get crazy, but we didn’t fully know it. And we had four lively young people brightening our home. Good times.