one year of quarantine

 holy cow. a year. 

it's been long enough now that the changes we've had to our everyday life are starting to feel normal. schooling at home at first was an utter crisis, and now it's just....going fine. at first, moving david's office to home was crisis and now....it's totally ok. figuring out if continuing to work in the clinic was dangerous and how to do some of my work at home and where and how was an uncomfortable process....and now it's just kinda great and i love the new balance of some work at home and some work in clinic. 

we cancelled flights, we cancelled parties, we stopped dining with friends and seeing extended family. we moved and NO ONE has seen the inside of our new house. summer camps were cancelled, and the world just sort of shut down. we lost a very special family member to non-covid, and the goodbyes felt pinched and restrained by the pandemic. friendships have grown distant through lack of nurturing contact. 

but you know what? we didn't get sick, and we found new and important ways to connect and to make our world a little smaller. 

now it's been a year (!) of all this, and i have had time to reflect on the benefits. the benefits of slowing down, of being together, of getting to know our kids a little better in these last moments of their young childhood, of de-emphasizing work and re-emphasizing health and family time. i will miss it when it's gone, in many ways. 

we are headed into better: i've been vaccinated, and so have 21% of wisconsites as of today. that's a big deal, and that is how we come together to move forward. i'm just surprised to discover that i'm gonna kind of miss some parts of this quarantine life. 

oh, last spring. we were so naive about how long this would last. 

and now, spring 2021. masked up, full of hope.