(Editor’s note: This essay is part of Bethesda Beat’s Coronavirus Chronicles personal essay series. Visit the submission page to learn more.)
I really did not want to leave my Bethesda home of 40 years.
But after a year of downsizing, our move to independent senior living in Rockville was imminent. We’d sold our house in mid-March, renting back until our late April move-in. We feel fortunate to have settled in the pre-coronavirus market.
Even before settlement, we’d begun social distancing, minimizing shopping and foregoing activities, including a planned “house cooling” party. With most of our belongings in storage for staging, we began final packing while hunkering down in a house containing minimal furniture (and only winter clothes).
Days later, moves into our new community were stopped until September. The offered alternative, a one-bedroom hotel suite with no stove or washer/dryer, was neither fiscally wise nor safe. Suddenly, we realized, in one month, we and our mini labradoodle would have no safe place to live.
We considered rentals despite virtual-only viewings, uncertain timelines, and long corridors challenging effective distancing. Friends and family offered bedrooms, tenable for weeks, not months. We worried that moving would involve innumerable opportunities for COVID-19 exposure, from movers to cable and internet technicians.
Finally, we approached the new owner of our home to see if we could stay longer. I will never forget his response: “At times like these, we need to be kind to each other.” He agreed to let us rent our home for two extra months.
Medical experts have confirmed that, while we will still need to find a place to live at the end of June, moving anywhere then is likely to be safer than moving in April.
So, after reluctantly counting down the remaining days here, as a result of the virus we will be spending two unexpected extra months, one final spring, in our beloved Bethesda home.
Beth Borko is a former custom training program specialist who lives in Bethesda.
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