Our Pandemic Year

2020 is thankfully, mercifully almost over. We will all enjoy kicking it to the curb and slamming the door behind it.

Our pandemic year has been a year of home. Work from home, school at home, shop from home, stay at home. It has been a year of waiting, too. Waiting for public health advice, waiting for vaccines to be developed, waiting for people to take the pandemic seriously, waiting, waiting, waiting for things to return to some semblance of normal, though we will likely be waiting on that for another year.

I sit here struggling to make sense of what to write. What is there to say, really? 2020 was so exceptional, so painful, so unique that it seems both a privilege and a curse to have lived (so far) through it. 10 years from now, how will we remember this time? How will the kids recall it in 50?

This was the year that Andres became a teenager. Yes, he turned 13, but even more than that, his voice changed, he got braces, and good lord he looks like a teenager now. He is growing larger, if not expressly taller, and he's into more teenage things--video games, sleeping late, puns, annoying his sisters (mainly Lucia) just to annoy them. I do feel sorry for him, though, because he has also spent most of this year learning from home, an experience that he has not much liked. It's been hard for him to stay motivated and connected. At some point this year--it must have been April, though it could have been September, I truly have no sense of time right now--I was in my office working, and I heard Andres grunting through jumping jacks and pushups in his room. I realized he was in PE class, but the thought of him, and all of his friends, working out alone at home just devastated me in a way that rising positivity rates, or rising death rates, never did. I am hopeful that his ninth grade year (!!) this coming fall will see him reconnecting, uncovered face to uncovered face, with all of his peers.

My teenager enjoying the beach.

This was also the year Celia became a tween. And if this year is any indication of what is to come, then we are in for an interesting ride. The transition to remote school was very hard for her in the spring--she was too stressed out by how she, and everybody else, looked onscreen in order to pay much attention to the lessons at hand. (Now she is back at school 2.5 days per week, and she seems to be much happier.) But the more concerning part, for me, was that her social circle has withered to only a couple of kids. With so many activities cancelled or modified because of the virus she simply hasn't had too much time on the field, court, or in the dance studio to hang with her peers. And while Andres has his little crew of kids that he hangs out with, Celia doesn't--so she's been diving deeper into her books and into Netflix than she ever has before. But short of forcing her to call/text her friends--a sure non-starter with her--then what can I do? I feel like this is a dilemma that most parents must be experiencing now: how much do we push our kids to stay social, when they can't really be social the way they want to be? And is it ok to just let our kids do whatever they want to do as long as they stay alive? This seems to be the new bar.

Celia and friend Juniper during our brief RI vacation.

And what about Lucia? It was largely a difficult year for her, too. Remote learning did not go well in the spring, as I documented a few months ago. Thankfully, she and Jibby continued to be best buds, and they hung out almost every day this summer, going on bike rides, heading to the park, and generally entertaining each other. That was a needed diversion for everybody. Now, this fall, Lucia is at school five days a week (2 days learning in her classroom, 3 days learning "virtually" from the art room or cafeteria), and she is doing much better than in the spring. She enjoys being in the school building, and she enjoys having recess with her friends. It's not the same as it was before. But it's not 100% different, either.

The girl with many nicknames

So, all in all, it's been a tough year. Nobody has been at their best. We're all just waiting, waiting, waiting.

There were some high points within this lousy year. We spent a long weekend in New Jersey, visiting cousins and grandparents and doing our best to remain physically distant. It was difficult, but it was also important to reestablish those connections after months and months of talking over Zoom. We spent a few days in Rhode Island, too, joining Tom, Madhabi, and their kids for a brief beach vacation. This was in August when COVID rates were low and interstate travel was still relatively safe. Like the NJ trip, this was a needed mental health break for our kids--they played in the sand, swam in the ocean, and watched movies with their friends, almost like in the old days.

What else did we do? We went on some hikes. We did a lot of puzzles and played a lot of games in the spring. We bought the girls a bunk bed for their room. We made hundreds of lunches for the needy. I spent a lot of time in the backyard garden. We ripped out the front hedges and planted some flowers. I somehow ran a youth ultimate program. Lucia learned how to ride a bike. Lucia and Celia performed in a very 2020 version of The Nutcracker. Natalia sewed a lot of masks, and then ended up buying a lot more. We held a lot of backyard movie nights for the kids and their friends. We spent a lot of money at Yogurt Beach.

Lucia poses in her Nutcracker costume.

Celia twirls for the camera.

It was also a year of breaking traditions. In a year we were supposed to travel to NJ for Thanksgiving, we ended up cooking a meal at home, the five of us dressed up around the holiday table. I made a turkey for the first time. (The kids ate it, so mission accomplished.) We had stuffing, creamed corn, homemade cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and breaded Brussels sprouts. We had leftovers for days, but with nobody to share them with, the leftover meals felt less festive, less celebratory. It was just food we hadn't yet eaten.

This year marked our first Christmas at home, too. Tamales were made here (by Natalia, with her mom on FaceTime), and cookies were baked here (by Celia). We shopped online and wrapped for hours. On Christmas eve, we five again sat around the family table for a meal (lasagna and roast chicken), celebrating the season but also wishing that the season would have been different, would have been normal, would have allowed us to do what we had always done, a trip we had long taken for granted. Christmas morning was still fun--everyone in pajamas, unwrapping gifts--but at some point I admitted to Natalia that though I have always wanted a Christmas at home, this was not exactly how I had envisioned it.

Andres helps make tamales.

So here we are on the brink of a new year. 2021. It has to be better than 2020, right? Some hope is on the horizon. Vaccines have been developed, and who knows, maybe we'll get vaccinated before any mass testing program is implemented (another huge public health fail from this past year). Biden is set to be inaugurated in three weeks. (But, again, my anticipation of that moment is tempered by my fear/expectation that Trump and 2020 have one final haymaker in the works.) We seem to be through the worst of everything, and even if we aren't, at least the end of the pandemic seems closer than it did a few months ago.

Good riddance. Let's not do this again anytime soon. To a better, healthier, more prosperous year ahead.

Celia, Andres, and Lucia at home.