Two Years Ago

Two years ago, the twins were sent home from school for two weeks to stop the spread of COVID. They didn’t go back until 18 months later. Two years ago, I wrote in my bullet journal that the stores were empty and cases were multiplying. We felt panicked but also had no clue how bad things would get — could not fathom 6 million people worldwide would be gone by this date in 2022. That almost 1 million of those people would be in the US. I’m not sure what I was worried about back then because, like I said, I didn’t imagine this.

Last year, I wrote:

Today marks a complete year at home. No in-person school. No in-person work. No in-person social events. No visits inside a home. I went from mostly paper books to mostly e-books. I went from no plants to an indoor herb garden. I walk in place in front of YouTube videos.

I’ve stopped believing this will be over soon.

We were still at least a month away from being able to get our first vaccine dose. It felt like it would never be our turn, and once it was our turn, that we would be able to get one of the coveted vaccination appointments.

Things look different now, even though I don’t consider things over. Not close. But we’re triple vaccinated, own a ton of KN-95 masks and wear them everywhere, and feel comfortable venturing back out into the world with precautions in place. We still get meals to go, but the kids are back in school and we’ve been to the theater. We visit people indoors with masks. We don’t feel limited, even though we clearly are more limited than we were a little over two years ago before COVID started spreading around the world. Maybe it doesn’t feel limiting because it’s so much more than we were doing last year at this time. For that, we’re grateful.