By Terra Avilla
A year. It’s been a year since our whole world shut down. I remember that Thursday one year ago when we were all told that this would hopefully be a two-week ordeal. Obviously we know the ending to that.
COVID-19 took away graduations, it took sport seasons, it took away our schools, our fair and our sense of normalcy. There is no denying that this pandemic took away a lot from our community. However, looking back on the year, I really want to focus on what we as a community gained.
I will always remember the day before schools closed, all of our community members coming to gather and donate food for the students. With little time for the schools to plan our community stepped in and made sure that students would not go hungry.
I will always remember the heart and teddy bears in the windows the first days of the shutdown. I will remember people volunteering to shop for their elderly neighbors, who were too frightened to go out. I will always remember how our grocery stores like IGA, SGO, Dollar General and Safeway worked double-time to make sure that food, and toilet paper for that matter, stayed on the shelves for all of us.
I will smile every time I think about how the high school rallied together to give the seniors some sort of graduation which, quite honestly, went very smoothly. And how the community came together to sponsor and love on our seniors throughout the county, through their adopt-a-senior program.
COVID-19 meant our businesses had to adapt. And adapt they did. Morning Glory went out of its way to provide necessities and Merry Morsels made yummy activity kits for bored at home kiddos.
Then came the homemade masks. With PPE being in short supply, I think Lassen County holds the record on talented sewing individuals. Refusing to let first responders go without, we had so many good-hearted people make us (and others) masks.
Even the heartbreak of not having a County Fair, could keep our community from supporting our young ranchers. The online auction was a raging success, as was Ms. Lassen County and Dancing for a Brand New Me, which found fun and alternative ways to host their respective events.
Need some more proof that our community is truly one of a kind? I was told today that a blessing out of COVID-19 can be seen in the fact that, for once, there are no dogs for adoption in the pound because they have all found homes.
Most of our schools have some form of in-person teaching, which for the country (and California) is a pretty impressive feat.
Truth be told – were the last 365 days easy? Absolutely not. But what we learned is how resilient we are as a community. How we truly can come together and pick one another up. Living in our little community the past year has made me immensely proud to be a Lassen County resident, and even through a pandemic, I still love the place we live.
