Seven Quick Takes: Are We There Yet?

One: It’s been a year since Jonah came home for spring break with his laptop and backpack of clothes and then found out he wasn’t going back. As we all know, a year is a long time to be doing… whatever this is we’re doing. It’s not quite perpetual quarantine, but I sure hope this isn’t the new normal.

I definitely had more side effects with the second dose of vaccine: go, immune system, go!

Two: There are signs of hope: vaccinations are rolling out, and I’m so encouraged by the research showing their efficacy. I’m not ready to eat at an indoor restaurant yet, but I did hug my fully-vaccinated parents (and was so happy, I forgot to take a photo.) Jonah is back at college- it doesn’t look like it did pre-pandemic, but he’s on campus and is so grateful for that.

Three: Work is… weird. For everyone’s safety, our office has moved most of our visits to telehealth. It’s great for chronic disease management (looking at you, diabetes!) but terrible for well-child care. So much of my diagnosis is really made through history, but there are some things even a good history can’t tell you. Every day, I see four or five people who have survived their own personal COVID-19 infection and at least one who has lost a loved one to it.

My neighbors made care packages for my medical assistants at work.

Four: I have been walking. I developed a bad case of metatarsalgia in September and haven’t run since. Thanks to a used-car’s worth of orthotics, my foot pain is, better, but I’m still not running. Walking instead is different, but good. I can definitely go longer, and it can be more social. I just passed 200km for the year so far.

A cold walk on New Year’s Day with two of my favorite people.

Five: Owen picked a college. Now we just have to get them through the next seven months till it starts. Early action (that’s the one where you apply early, hear early, but aren’t committed to a school you can’t afford before you get the aid package) is really great. I wish more schools offered it as an option.

I realize what a gift this is: that my kids have had choices, and that they received enough financial aid and scholarships to make it possible for them to choose based on preference and not just dollars. But it also feels like major vindication to me, after all those years of wondering if our choice to homeschool would hamstring my kids. It hasn’t, and for that I am enormously grateful.

Six: The girls and I have been watching The Great British Bake-Off. It is the first time I’ve really appreciated “reality TV.” Now we walk around the house saying things like, “Just a few minutes shy of a perfect bake” and “it’s not bad at all” and craving self-saucing pudding.

Seven: So here we are in 2021, which so far looks a lot like 2020.

As much as the pandemic has been difficult on so many levels, it gave us a bonus ten months together as a family. The massive amounts of time at home together showed our fault lines and took away many of the distractions we’d been using to ignore our problems. For months of 2020, it was just the six of us, the cast of Community and a handful of mental health professionals we were lucky enough to find early on.

February flew by in a haze of doctor’s appointments, parental surgeries and hospital visits. Here’s hoping “in like a lion, out like a lamb” applies to more than weather.