DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) - Drive through many local neighborhoods, and one is struck by the hearts.
Snaking their way across storm doors and blossoming in front windows, their creators hope the multi-colored displays will uplift the dispirited in the midst of a global pandemic. COVID-19 has killed more than 27,000 people in the U.S. and isolated millions inside their residences.
“When you hear the news, it’s really devastating,” said Holly Thill, 33, of Dubuque. “Hopefully, if anything, we all come out a little bit nicer and appreciate the human connection more since we haven’t been allowed it.”
Across social media, people have posted pictures of the heartful window dressings, many of which express notes of support for “essential workers” - the truckers who transport foodstuffs, the grocery clerks who scan bottles of hand sanitizer in check-out lines and the medical practitioners who tend to the sick and dying.
For Thill, a laid-off restaurant server, paper cutouts were a welcome distraction. She has isolated in her Lincoln Avenue home for more than a month.
Now, her front door is splattered with paper hearts, faded by the spring sun.
“Of course, every day I was bored, so I added a few more, a few more, and then we filled the thing out,” Thill told the Telegraph Herald.
The time apart from family has worn on her. She could not join her niece for her golden birthday celebration, and FaceTime isn’t a satisfying substitute.
“I have a baby nephew and I’m like, well, is he going to remember me when this is all over with?” Thill said.
The heart cutouts also offer an outlet for creativity.
As tough as isolation has been for her daughter, Kelli Gallo, 32, of Dubuque, has found craft projects that engage 5-year-old Sarah’s senses.
Toilet paper rolls covered in peanut butter and birdseed hang from bushes in their front yard, while googly-eyed snails in a sitting room smile at passersby.
Then there are the rainbow hearts. A multicolored rainstorm of them trickles down the front windows, behind which Sarah can look out onto Garfield Avenue.
“She helped tell me where to put them,” Kelli said.
Remaining at home is admittedly a challenge.
“The kids, they get kind of restless,” she said. “We’re just trying to stay positive. … We don’t need to go shopping as much as we do. We can come up with stuff to keep us entertained.”
But COVID-19 also has presented teachable moments.
“It makes us aware of how we’re affecting others,” Kelli said. “Respecting boundaries.”
The closure of schools statewide has taken a toll on teens, whose desire to socialize with peers is proverbial.
Skylar Koster, 17, is spending much of his time indoors at his grandmother’s house in Dubuque, “doing nothing.”
The inactivity is “exhausting,” said the Hempstead High School junior. He misses his friends.
“I wanted to hang out with one, but my grandma says I can’t because we got to social distance,” Koster said.
Skylar’s grandmother Sue Koster, 62, said the isolation has left her with cabin fever. She works as a food service worker for Dubuque Community Schools but has sheltered at home since the district closed its facilities in March.
“I don’t think I want to retire now,” she said, laughing.
Skylar and his 7-year-old cousin taped hearts on Sue’s front porch about two weeks ago. Skylar also cut a sliver of cardboard into the shape of a semi-tractor trailer that reads, “Thanks truckers for all u do.”
The trucks are a regular presence on Central Avenue, where they rumble past Sue’s wood-paneled house.
Skylar wants to honor “what they are doing for us - delivering us food and all that.”
He hopes to be a trucker someday.
An empty nester and widow, Mary Ann Kelleher, 87, of Dubuque, is accustomed to solitude. COVID-19 has merely reaffirmed her stage of life.
But she worries for her son and daughter-in-law, who are employees at a Dubuque medical facility.
“She is on the front lines” working as an X-ray technician, Kelleher said. “She told me one day that she had X-rayed three people who were possibly (COVID-19) candidates.”
Kelleher said the two only visit her outside on the deck of her Pinard Street home, where they regularly bring her “all the necessities.”
“They won’t come near me,” she said. “They are afraid they are going to bring something in. They wear masks.”
Kelleher’s daughter-in-law recently delivered several red hearts, which Kelleher affixed to the front door.
“She gave me all the red ones because my husband was named Red,” Kelleher said. “Actually, his name was Donovan, and in the old days, they never called anyone by Donovan.”
Red died 12 years ago.
Kelleher fills her days with housework, light reading, telephone calls and televised broadcasts from the president.
“I’m used to living alone,” she said.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.