The hint was subtle. More Asian passengers were wearing masks on a return flight from a work meeting in January 2020, but Sirje Kiin wasn't alarmed. Wearing masks is part of the cultural in many Asian countries.

Shortly after she returned to Madison, though, the pattern of her life changed.

"After I came home, the pandemic broke out and the borders closed," she said.

Kiin, the wife of Dakota State University professor Jack Walters, is an Estonian author who serves on several boards in her home country and often speaks at conferences. For her, travel is an integral part of life.

Suddenly, conferences she was planning to attend were canceled. The Estonian language and culture class she had been teaching through the Toronto Summer University for 10 years was canceled.

With her life disrupted, she found herself unable to work on her memoirs, which is the book she currently has in progress.

"I was not able to concentrate," she said. "Everything changed in my life."

Accustomed to releasing books and going on tour, she found herself at home, coping with the pandemic. She began to focus on strengthening her immune system by swimming and walking. She and Walters also started golfing.

"Gardening has been helping me during the pandemic," Kiin noted as she looked around the lush garden she has cultivated in their back yard. "I've been reading a lot, but not much writing."

She has also not seen her son or her grandson.

"They can't visit here and I can't go there," she said. They keep in touch through social media, email and videocalls.

"That's how he introduced his girlfriend to me," Kiin commented, referring to her 22-year-old grandson Martin.

This spring, as COVID vaccines have changed the impact of the coronavirus and seem to be stemming the tide of the pandemic, she is watching both numbers and borders. She knows that she will not be able to return to Estonia until the borders are open between the two countries.

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