For the first few months after the pandemic hit, life was hard for Liz Glasgow and her young son. The restaurant in the Talladega County town of Lincoln where she worked as a cook closed down. And COVID closures made it so she was no longer able to lead Zumbini music and dance classes for small children at the Trussville Civic Center, a pursuit she pours her heart into and considers a personal passion.
“When the pandemic first hit, obviously we were all like, this is going to be over in two or three weeks, but when I couldn’t teach the Zumbini classes anymore, it was like, what am I going to do? I had to think outside the box,” said Glasgow, who lives in Cropwell, a small St. Clair County community.
She worried about how she was going to make ends meet and said she had to make difficult financial decisions, especially in the early days of the pandemic.
“It was very hard financially for me, as it was for many people. For me as a single mom, I had to really, really budget every single dime,” Glasgow, 41, said.
“We used to have extra money to go and get ice cream … To have to choose whether to take your kid to get ice cream or pay your power bill - of course you pay your power bill. Not being able to take him for ice cream is heartbreaking.”
But Glasgow said she persevered, intent on finding a way to make the best of a difficult situation. The has family members who contracted COVID, none died or required hospitalization, and she and her son have avoided the virus.
In August, things began looking up when Glasgow found a fulfilling new job.
“I started teaching at LEAPS Academy in Pell City up here, and they have a lot of special needs children. So, the blessing in disguise was I got to expand Zumbini to not just moms and their babies, but to special needs children who wouldn’t otherwise have a music education program,” she said. “It made COVID all worth it to me to see that professionally.”
Still, she doesn’t believe that life will go back to normal “in the immediate future,” and she said she believes day-to-day existence may never fully return to how it was before the pandemic.
“Two years from now, I think it’s going to be kind of how it is now,” she predicted. “In five years, I think adults will go back to the old activities, but I think always in the back of our mind we’ll be thinking about whether we can take our children, whether it’s safe.”
Glasgow said this year has been a struggle, but that she’s made it through with the help of her faith.
“I know at the beginning I was like, ‘I have faith God is going to get me through this,’ but there were some nights where I said, ‘I’m just going to have the faith of a mustard seed,’ and God has always provided for me and I thank him for that every day,” she said. “We never went without anything I consider a necessity – and I don’t consider ice cream a necessity.”
This is part of a series of stories by AL.com to reflect on the 1-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic reaching Alabama. Each day leading up to March 13 we will elevate the voices of those impacted.
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