FORT WORTH, Texas — On Thursday afternoon, Kathleen Reed, a retired counselor, was enjoying a quiet moment on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans.
"We're just sitting out," she said during a Zoom interview. "We are going to go out on a airboat here in a little bit."
What a difference a year makes.
Nearly 12 months ago, the Granbury woman spoke to us from another body of water: the Pacific Ocean. That's where she and 3,500 other people were stuck aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship because of a COVID-19 outbreak.
"It's kind of like walking on the moon," she told us in March 2020, while quarantined in her cabin with her husband. "It's not been done very often."
COVID was still new at the time, and the world watched as passengers and crew circled off the California coast for days as officials made plans for them.
Reed said they'd seen reports of COVID on a cruise ship in Asia before they boarded on February 21, but "never really thought it would be here." She remembers watching helicopters bring COVID tests to the ship.
"You never think it will happen to you," she said. "It was just denial, I guess."
Reed and other passengers eventually went into federal quarantine at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. They were released after 13 days.
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"We could go outside and walk around in the parking lot, but we had a 6-foot fence all the way around with armed guards on the outside," she recalled.
Quarantine is now typically spent at home, and social distancing is no longer a foreign term or idea.
We asked Reed if she would've believed it had someone told her on the cruise that we'd still be dealing with the virus a year later.
"No, no," she said. "I was like everybody else. We all kind of thought, 'Oh, you know, summertime will get here and things will warm up and it'll be better.'"
Reed said it's a bit strange to think she was involved in such a public part of pandemic history. She's vaccinated now and as hopeful as ever.
"Maybe we'll get up to that community immunity and be safe, and kind of get back to normal," she said.