Today I am reflecting a lot on how much things can change in a year. We are 12 months from the time when the pandemic truly started changing all of our lives…at least in the United States and especially here in Huntsville, AL. Our city started shutting everything down around the 15th of March. I remember the weekend well, Nyoka’s high school hosted a JV tournament that weekend and we were bracing ourselves for a call any minute canceling the whole event. It never did, but that Sunday…on the last day…we got the news that there would be no school the following week and things snowballed from there.
In the last year we started wearing masks and standing 6-feet behind people in a line at the grocery store. If we didn’t know to do that, the newly applied signs on the floors in every shop would tell us. We keep hand sanitizer in our car and the stores now keep it at the checkout. There’s plexiglass barriers everywhere. We stopped eating inside restaurants and we canceled vacations. We established home offices and became much more acquainted with our kid's education. Our dogs now panic when they're home alone, our collection of puzzles tripled, and we bought bidets so we never have to panic when we're out of toilet paper again.
(Or maybe that was just my husband.)
In my family, we saw a lot of non-pandemic related changes. Donnie went on sabbatical and started turning our back yard and patio into spaces we enjoy. Eliah moved to an apartment closer to our house, meaning we meet for walks and movies weekly. Nyoka started driving. We became a 3-car family, and then went back to a 2-car family when an asshat ran a red light and hit me leaving Target. Wesley got his tendon translocation surgery. Mom moved here, experienced kidney failure, became a dialysis patient, and then died with my brother and I there for her final breath.
I get whiplash thinking only about my Mom and about how things changed in 12 months for she and I. I went from seeing her rarely as she lived in another state, to seeing her many times a day as she lived down to road, to seeing her never again.
Oh, and because of that we’re a 2-dog family now.
And then - of course - there are non-pandemic related changes that occurred across the country in the last 12 months. We now have a President that I actually voted for, but some of my personal relationships were changed along the way during an ugly election that culminated in lies from the former President that incited an insurrection at the Capitol. Ahmaud Arbery, Christian Cooper and George Floyd brought conversations around racism to the mainstream and anti-racism books became best sellers. JK Rowling continued to solidify her position as a transphobe. We all fell in love with the Rose Family and with Ted Lasso.
It's a lot. We all went through a lot. We're all still going through a lot. Some of us buried ourselves in books to escape the reality we live in, while others built paradise in Animal Crossing. Some got new pets to give us more company trapped in our homes, some of us got comfortable communicating on a screen on a daily basis. Some of us did our best to get out of bed while others found inspiration to start new hobbies and change their lives in many positive ways. Some of us fell to the bottom and found our way back out again, some of us are still there, just holding onto the hope for brighter days.
As we reflect on this past year, let's do so with kindness and grace in our hearts for ourselves and for others. We survived, when so many didn’t. And in the end, that should be celebrated. Let us try to go forward with more empathy towards others and more unconditional love towards ourselves.
I should write down how profoundly different & dizzying the past twelve months have been. You and I both lost a mom and I think the grief will always be intertwined with my memories. I think my brain blocked some of it and never stored some of the events.