I tend to carry my camera with me most of the time – a 9-year-old Canon Rebel T3i. I get nervous when I forget and leave home without it because I know that’s the day I’ll see something wonderfully camera-worthy – and miss it.

While Hannah was in Europe, during a trip to Krakow, her Canon T3i died without warning. She was crushed. We Googled every possible “fix” and came up empty. She took it to a camera shop in Copenhagen. They were honest with her that it would cost a chunk of change to look at it – if it could be fixed at all.

So on Tuesday, March 10th, I packed up my camera and shipped to it to Denmark. She’d been using her iPhone camera, and I wanted her to have a decent camera for the rest of her study abroad trip. And on Wednesday, March 11th, Denmark went into shutdown over COVID-19, and Hannah’s study abroad program announced they were closing. She arrived back in the USA on Friday, March 13th. My camera arrived in Denmark on Thursday, March 19th, where it remains until the lock-down ends, and her host family can look into shipping it back to her.

I’ve been without a camera for a month. That leaves me feeling kind of naked. So my birthday gift to myself was a new Canon SL3. I spent the weekend experimenting with it.

Today on a trip into town, Hannah and I spotted a trio of Blue Heron’s in the marshy part of the river. And now that I had a camera again – I had no camera with me in the car. Hannah loves Herons, so she made a legal U-turn and headed home for the darned camera.