We would spend the next day celebrating my niece with kids running around and family. My parents talked about their trip to Flordia that they were planning on taking the next week. We ate lunch from a shared buffet and people made side comments about how nice it would be to have a week off from work. Several hours later we were celebrating the birthday of a dear friend and his family. Our kids sharing ice cream sundaes and barbecuing ribs. At 7pm we got the call. The schools would be closed for 2 weeks. An hour later I got an email that my office was closed for the next 4 weeks.
And so that warm day in March became the last day in a year that we gathered without concern.
A year later as we prepare to gather again for my nieces birthday, this time with just my brother and his family and my parents, who have been vaccinated, it is with both joy and continued worry. It has been a year of home schooling and working from home. Of time spent together as a family, canceled events and missing our friends. We still did so much, wearing masked, socially distanced, online. I want to say what we gained has outweighed what we lost. That the increased time as a family, board games, movie nights and magical visits from fairies and bunnies and Santa will be what we remember.
But I would be lying. Instead my kids have learned to wear masks, seen a country divided on what to do and listened to the school board for our district fight amongst themselves about what to do. They saw the worst in people more then they saw the best. And the new found anxiety of getting sick, of losing someone, of never being able to play sports again or return to the stage. And we did our best as the adults to safely guide them through the storm but we were drowning to. Overtaxed and overwhelmed. Struggling to maintain friendships, to get work completed while also teaching elementary school math. To figure out a new way to shop for groceries and navigating who, if anyone, should be allowed in our bubble.
I read an article when this all started that talked about how the adults get to chose how our kids will remember this time, and that is kind of true. But our kids are not unaware of what is happening around them. Will they grow up seeing more what divides us then connects us? Will they be fearful of the world?
I look back on this year and I can not remember how we made it through. But we did. But that was all we did. We made it through.
