Lida Gibson: What We Miss
Being Together While We’re Apart
Because we all miss our Fondren family, here are our Sequester Stories—a series of stories and photos by Fondren folks sharing what our “pandemic lives” are about.
Shirley Burris and Lida Burris Gibson celebrate Mardi Gras
My mom, Shirley Burris, and I are doing pretty well over here on Cavalier Drive. Mama has enjoyed watching the increased numbers of walkers, runners, and bike riders outside our front windows. And the restoration of the bird feeder just outside the window has provided us with nature’s best entertainers—birds and squirrels. (We had to do away with the bird feeder for a while after it attracted the wrong kind of furry friends—rats. Squirrels are allowed.)
After my original overwhelming fear that I’d bring home germs that might kill my mother, I settled down a bit and am trying to enjoy the new pace of life. I am fortunate that UMMC is allowing me to work from home--at the moment at least.
What we miss most, of course, is being around people. We’re thankful to be able to enjoy (via computer) most of the events that anchored Mama’s weeks—Sunday school, church, History is Lunch at MDAH, and Wednesday night supper—but it’s just not the same as being there in person. It’s not the events themselves that are the most important thing, of course, but rather the community those events represent. We’ve been able to see many of our Fondren friends on the computer screen each week, but we particularly miss Rims and Judy, whose faces we haven’t seen in weeks it seems.
For me, the idea that I might not see my daughter for another few months is the hardest part. The longest we’ve gone without seeing each other since she was born is about eight weeks when she was in Italy for a semester, but I visited her there during her fall break. She has immune issues, so she is at an elevated risk if she were to be exposed. She’s been sheltering in place in Austin and just finished her PhD coursework online at UT.
So…we wait. We embrace new technology. We pray others will heed information from medical professionals so that this quarantine will not be unnecessarily prolonged. And we look forward to the day when getting ready for church on Sundays no longer involves logging into Zoom or YouTube.
