Thursday, January 7, 2021

Has It Really Only Been A Year??

A group of people unaware of how much life was going to change in two short months.

To think how much the world changed in 2020 boggles my mind. Social distancing, isolation, and quarantine is our current way of life. Over the past few months, I've caught myself watching a TV show and cringing when I see characters stand too close to one another or wondering where their masks are. Then I remember the 90's were pre-Covid times (a re-watch of The X-Files made my quarantine watch list in December). I now think about life as pre-Covid and Covid times. I have yet to let myself think too much about what our world will look like post-Covid--will we go back to pre-Covid times or will it be like 9/11 and life as we knew it changes? So many thoughts about so many things. 

Yesterday, my FB memories popped up and I scrolled through, just as I always do. I found myself looking intently at photos from one year ago. January 2020, before Covid stopped the world in its tracks. I thought about that day. It was cold and snowy. We went spent time in an enclosed space, that was not our home, and climbed a wall next to people we didn't know. I think I even hugged someone else's child at one point when they fell. When we needed a break, we walked to a break room and made ourselves tea and hot chocolate. We used cups that weren't ours, that we trusted someone else to wash. I spoke to workers intimately. I helped a total stranger put on their snow shoes because they didn't know how. When we got warm from climbing, we put our coats on and walked around in the snow, but not for long. Apparently, we felt 28 degrees was "too cold" to be outside. I laugh at that now because we spend time outside no matter how cold it is.

The date on my pictures say it was just one year ago, but those things seem like a lifetime ago. I stop myself from thinking if we'll ever have an afternoon like that again, because we will. In some fashion. But how will it look? Our partially ignorant, pre-Covid bliss can't be fully restored. Perhaps it's because 2020 and the beginning of 2021, as I watch the news coverage of our Capitol being attacked, has been anything but simple. A year that went by quickly and yet dragged on forever; that wound up looking more different than our wildest dreams. 

Looking at photos of us doing something that seemed so normal then, but seems so foreign now, I imagine I'll have many of these moments in the coming weeks. I know events we attended, parties, and trips are all going to come up in those memories. I haven't thought a lot about the normalcy the beginning of 2020 brought us, but the difference a year makes slapped me hard in the face. Probably harder than it ever has.