We are still home. We have lots of friends overseas in Australia and other countries whose lockdowns have come and gone, and they have kept the virus in check as outbreaks come and go. Our situation has never really improved and we are going on our 10th month. Today, more than 3000 Americans were reported dead from COVID; more than on 9-11. That's just today. The average has been hovering around 2000-a-day for a week or two, and before that, it was around a thousand-a-day for a long time. It's really hard to grasp the scale of that much death in comparison to other events, wars, and diseases in our lifetime, or even our parents' and grandparents' lifetimes. This has just lasted so long and been so cummulative. The anniversary for Pearl Harbor was the other day and I checked the numbers a few times just to see if they would surpass the casualties for that anniversary. They didn't, but they were closer.
There's been an exodus from the city. We know several couples, families, and individuals who have left for now because they can work remotely. A handful of friends changed professions altogether and moved away.
Now that the weather is cold, we take advantage when it's unseasonably warm to see family or few friends outdoors. We continue to do recess with our neighbors every weekday at 10 sharp, and the kids still really love it. It's Penny's main socialization (and ours too!) other than being with her parents all day most days, so it's pretty important and helps us all maintain our sanity. We all get out our energy and warm up in the sun by swinging on the playground, running around with nerf guns, tossing the frisbee or shooting baskets, the kids scootering or chasing each other around. We have our snacks and morning tea.
Halloween came and went. It was surprisingly fun because our neighborhood did a fantastic job of communicating socially distant/safe practices beforehand, and almost everyone followed them. There was a one-way path, pre-packaged treats, and anyone that wanted to greet kids did so from a distance, usually sitting out in lawn chairs with blankets or by a little fire. It was adorable and heart-warming. To my surprise, we even had a few leftover bags of treats, which means that after the first greedy boogers we saw trying to raid tables, nobody else took more than their share.
The election came and... is still going away slowly.
Thanksgiving came and went quietly. We traded some food with family during brief outdoor and/or masked visits, but mostly spent the day by ourselves and partly outside with the neighbors, and did a zoom with family too. It was almost like one of our Thanksgivings overseas.
And now that it's the Christmas season, we are all in. We have multiple advent calendars, we are doing Hanukkah, and I probably did too much online shopping already.
Today, I went back to the ghost town that is the campus where I used to work in-person. This was the third time I'd been back; I tend to go once a season and this was my winter visit. the building was cold because the heat has been turned off. It's eerie because so much of how the classroom was left looks just like kids were there yesterday, even though no kids have been there for over nine months. There's art on the drying rack, a March calendar clipped to the parent communication board that was never taken home, the sign-in sheet with names of some kids who won't be back, spare jackets still hanging in cubbies, the spare clothes bins and nap blankets and items that may or may not ever get taken home. I finally took home some items like my bottle of ibuprofen and box of tea that I figured would just be there when I came back and get used eventually, but after this long I'll just use them at home. At my work, my colleagues hope we will be able to return to work in-person in the spring? Maybe April? May? We have no clue. My one year work anniversary was a little over a week ago (of when I returned to work there; I had previously worked there about two years also); 3/4 of that time has been from home. I'm still very grateful that my work has gone through every effort to minimize layoffs and furloughs. Those of us that can't work at our full capacity remotely have taken on temporary work with other departments. For now, we have five furlough days we can choose when to take, from November to March. It's a small price to pay, and I have no complaint.
A vaccine is already being rolled out in the UK. It will start being given out to first responders and the elderly later this month. It will still be several months before it will actually have any effect on our lives though - we will all still need to wear masks, socially distance, and not spend much time indoors with people outside of our households.
I am hopeful 2021 will be better, but it will be a long time before life can remotely feel "normal" again. For all we know, it may not return to the old normal ever again. I can't imagine I would feel comfortable spending time indoors in public spaces without a mask, near strangers, for a long time... even if I was vaccinated and the majority of people were too. It will feel foreign and strange. We watch movies from just a few years ago and instinctually think, "Those people are too close", "They shouldn't go in that house with those people they don't live with", and "That gathering has too many people". The thought of going to a wedding or large gathering indoors makes me cringe. Hopefully after the vaccine is widespread, regular travel can resume, and it's finally safe for all schools to return in-person, it will eventually not be scary to see groups of people like we used to.
I always think about how this time is affecting the development and personalities of my daughter and all the kids we know of various ages. It's the biggest experiment we never wanted to impose on them, and on ourselves.
