“You know, you said we would be out of this in 2 weeks?” my daughter told me as we were driving last week. It was almost out of the blue. She was talking about COVID-19, of course. As if I needed to tell you that. As if, like everything else, you couldn’t just assume.
“I said what?” I replied, incredulously. “I don’t think so. When?!?”
“Um … a year ago,” she said.
A year ago? No! … Wait … Really?!? … Um …
“Oh,” I finally said. “I guess I did say that.”
I hadn’t thought much about the anniversary of COVID-19 up until that point. How this marked the beginning of the world turning upside down as the virus gained a deadly foothold. Forced us to upend our lives and alter almost everything about our daily routines. Things we never could have foreseen – toilet paper shortages, home haircuts, virtual schools, masks that hide precious smiles. And more important things, like lost family and friends.
For all the news stories about this milestone, it wasn’t until she said this that it really hit me.
A year ago it all began.
Think about it: The news from China. The first cases on U.S. soil. The travel bans and the constant washing of hands. The early quarantines. The closings and lockdowns. The move to remote. To virtual. To Zoom. To the quiet, and the isolation. The haunting stillness. I remember going for a run one night after Florida locked down. I ran right down the middle of what should have been a busy street. There was no one. Not a soul. I will never forget that desolate feeling.
Or the kids like my daughter who came home from one day and didn’t go back. She was an eighth grader and never saw the inside of her middle school again. It sounds like fiction to say it. The stuff of novels or superhero movies, when someone snaps a finger and things disappear.
This all started a year ago. Only, it was more than just the anniversary that struck me. It was what I had told her: “We would be out of this in 2 weeks.”
Well … missed that one a little bit.
It’s incredible to think about. Taking yourself back to those early weeks in 2020 when we couldn’t have known how this would all play out. That we would still be struggling with it a year later. I would have scoffed at that. I guess I did. Two weeks and through. That kind of made sense to me back then.
I thought of it like a hurricane. It blows in. It makes a terrible mess and does tremendous damage. You hunker down and do the things they tell you. You hope for the best. You run out of time to prep, and so you start to pray. Because what else is there to do when the power goes out. The winds come in. The rain lashes you. The waters swell and creeps up. Then suddenly, it dies down. It goes still. It recedes. And you begin the process of cleaning up the mess.
In my world, that was how disasters played out. They came on slow and went away quick, leaving you the heavy work of recovery, and healing.
But COVID-19, for all its teasing, never went away. It never let us recover. Or heal. Here we are, still struggling with it a year later. Still trying to get clear as we mark a year since its arrival.
Thankfully, things feel more hopeful right now. We think we can see light at the end of the tunnel. COVID cases are dropping, as are hospitalizations. The vaccines are making their way into arms, and you have the sense that maybe – just maybe! – we might be “coming out of this.” That this time it could be for real.
They’re such tempting words to say. Tantalizing. Full of hope and promise. Opportunity. But also, hard to trust. Aren’t they? Easy to say, more difficult to believe?
I read an article recently that said COVID-19 has conditioned us to see the world through a more negative lens. Afraid to be too optimistic because we’ve been burned before, and don’t want to get our hopes up. We crave getting back to “normal,” but sometimes it just seems too far out of reach. Or we can barely remember what that even looks like.
A year since we’ve been … normal.
“We will be out of this in 2 weeks,” I told her a year ago. It sounds so ridiculous when I think about it now. Maybe it’s time for me to get out of the predictions market! Good thing I don’t gamble, or speculate.
But I think I AM going to keep trying to see the daylight. Try to bring my optimism and hopefulness back. Believe that maybe things really are on the upswing, and that this thing called “normal” may be closer than it seems. Who knows? Why not?
Besides, if I’m wrong, that will just be more fodder for my daughter on a future drive. And I can deal with eating that crow then.