In January, I planned for February. Planned for three birthdays, two birthday parties, and one big trip, the biggest we’d ever taken as a family. In the middle of all that, I turned 33. I remember feeling exhausted then, ready for something—anything—to change.
At the tail end of January, or maybe it was very early February, I remember listening to The Daily and hearing for the first time about this disease over in China. It was my first introduction to COVID (and to Donald G. McNeil, Jr., who I had no idea would become one of my favorite people of the year). He talked about lockdowns and overloaded hospitals. It sounded awful. Thank goodness we don’t need to worry about that here, I remember thinking, as I pulled into the parking lot of Target, hopping out of my car without a thought to walking into a store with a bunch of people without masks.
In February we celebrated those birthdays. I held back-to-back birthday parties for the first time: family on Saturday, friends on Sunday. It felt both crazy and genius. One enormous clean up of the house, one enormous mess, and then one enormous effort to put it all back together. A couple weeks later, we officially celebrated those birthdays in Disneyworld, making our way through Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom and LEGOland. We arrived with two five-year-olds and a three-year-old and returned with six-year-olds and a four-year-old. One six-year-old became a princess while we were there. The oldest hasn’t stopped talking about LEGOland since.
On February 25th, I talked about “leaning into the ordinary” for Lent. Just. Bless all of my heart.
In March, I was preparing for a writing conference in April. I was also considering a part-time job. Something I could do from home, in the few hours a week the kids were at school.
Bless all of my whole entire heart again.
First, the writing conference was postponed until 2021. Which seemed a bit extreme, but okay. Then the week of March 9th got weird. Super weird. It felt like there was a storm brewing but we didn’t know if it would be a sunshower or a category 5 hurricane.
I happened to be at school on March 12th, the last day the kids were in school: Spring Break started the next day. It was a Thursday, because I was there every week on Thursdays. I’d become friendly with many of the teachers who came in and out of the workroom where I volunteered. A couple of teachers were traveling to Mexico and I remember thinking that leaving the country sounded like a terrible idea. Mostly I had a gut-level feeling in the pit of my stomach, a feeling that would be confirmed by our school districts in the coming weeks: this would be the last day any of us would be in this building for the rest of the school year.
A leprechaun was supposed to visit their classroom after Spring Break. Caden and Brooklyn’s Kindergarten teacher warned them the leprechaun caused mischief: chairs turned over, books pulled off the bookshelf. Caden decided, when they didn’t return to school, that the leprechaun chose to terrorize our house instead. “The leprechaun did it!” he would say whenever something was off: whether that was a misplaced LEGO creation or a sibling who’d left toothpaste smeared across the sink.
Maybe 2020 was the leprechaun’s fault.
In March, even though I’d been doing grocery pick-up for years, I found myself back inside the grocery store, because everyone else discovered grocery pick-up, too. We wiped those groceries down with a bleach solution. The week of spring break held new updates every day, from business closures to Spring Break being extended a week to stay at home orders. I began documenting our days because it all felt surreal. I woke up and then remembered all over again, in a wave of emotion, what this new life was.
Also, on that extended spring break, Brooklyn broke both of her wrists. Because of course.
In April, I became pretty good at schooling the kids. They did a few virtual activities with their teacher each day. I covered our entire dining room table with paper and set out a bin of crayons while they sat and listened to math and reading lessons. I printed out worksheets and they drew pictures and wrote sight words and math problems across the paper. Nolan rolled along with everything and became an honorary member of their Kindergarten class, completing the last three months of the virtual Kindergarten curriculum alongside his brother and sister.
I enforced a silent reading time. We had the afternoons to play. I ordered the entire Anne of Green Gables boxed set and hunkered down to read. I made dalgona coffee.
We entered the period of the stay-at-home order. We explained to the kids that despite playing with their neighborhood friends over Spring Break, we wouldn’t be doing that anymore. It was just the five of us. Here, at home. Even the parks were closed. We had to try the best we could to be with each other.
It was Easter and it snowed. Even though we’d been rid of snow for a solid six weeks by that point. I bought the kids Easter pajamas instead of fancy clothes. I picked up brunch from a local restaurant and ended up sitting in line for over an hour because no one had figured out how to do this efficiently yet.
In April, we watched Tiger King for some reason. And Carole Baskin became a household name.
In May I hit a second wave of grief. I grieved our lost school year. I grieved the loss of t-ball, what would have been Nolan’s very first year. I grieved the loss of their dance recital. I grieved the loss of what is usually one of the absolute craziest months of the year. I grieved that we weren’t getting McDonald’s between dress rehearsals and t-ball games. I grieved the loss of time without kids. I grieved that we were entering another season without an end in sight.
It was Mother’s Day and despite having absolutely gorgeous weather for days it was frigid that day. I was in a terrible mood all day long. All I wanted to do was explore a nearby park outside and we couldn’t even do that. Everything was awful.
We started biking every single afternoon. The kids kind of hated it but I needed it. I prepared for summer despite feeling like we’d already lived through summer, what with the three months the kids had already spent at home.
At the end of May, a black man was lynched in our city and the world was turned upside down again. The whole world was literally and figuratively on fire. We visited the memorial and it felt like we walked on hallowed ground. George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor; these names became like liturgies.
In June we began “summer school”. Every morning we did an activity to learn about a woman in history (Amelia Earhardt. Bessie Coleman. Jane Goodall.) and had silent reading and iPad time. We went on nature walks and tested what items floated or sunk in water and every morning around 9:00, we began with a bike ride around the neighborhood.
They played at home. Together. Mostly outside. They splashed in the pool and ran around the backyard and every day bled into the next.
In July we watched Hamilton. Several times. And the soundtrack has yet to stop playing in our house. Only interrupted by Folklore, which we also listened to on repeat because Taylor Swift made it her mission to try to save 2020.
We went to Duluth for the day. We stayed in basically the same spot the whole day as the kids collected rocks and swam in the water (sans swimsuits because I’ve literally never been to Duluth before where it’s warm enough to actually swim) and threw rocks in the water for hours on end.
I painted Nolan’s room and turned it into the “rainbow room” he requested. It was good to have a project.
Also, they played at home. Together. Mostly outside. They splashed in the pool and ran around the backyard and every day bled into the next.
In August we waited to see what the school year would bring. In those days, if two or more parents gathered, they talked of nothing but school. There was a constant on-edge, anxious feeling in my stomach. Every school option felt terrible. I hit a wall because it was the 684th day of summer.
Still, they played at home. Together. Mostly outside. They splashed in the pool and ran around the backyard and every day bled into the next.
In September, we prepared to go back to school. Three mornings a week for Nolan, hybrid for Caden and Brooklyn (three days at home, two in school). The start of school was delayed by one week because that’s how things rolled this year. I brought them each to the store individually to pick out school supplies: the first time they’d set foot in a store since before the pandemic. I tried to figure out what it would look like to do things like “be places at specific times” again. I remained in disbelief that they would actually go to school for real.
But they did. I had 2.75 hours to myself every Friday morning and it was the longest stretch of time I had to myself since March 12th.
In October, we celebrated our 10-year anniversary. And if the traditional 10-year anniversary gift is to eat take-out at home wearing comfy pants, then we nailed it.
Otherwise, we fell into a routine of sorts. Every day was different. On Mondays, Nolan went to preschool and Caden and Brooklyn had a virtual morning meeting. On Tuesdays, Caden and Brooklyn were distance learning. On Wednesdays, Nolan went to preschool and Caden and Brooklyn were distance learning. On Thursdays, Caden and Brooklyn went to school. On Fridays, everyone went to school.
My head spun just to type that. Each day I woke up and my first thought was to remind myself what day it was. I would literally jolt awake and remind myself what awaited us that day.
In October, we bought pumpkins. We jumped in piles of leaves. And we trick-or-treated as Alexander Hamilton, Eliza Hamilton, and Aaron Burr because Hamilton mania had yet to subside around these parts.
In November we voted. We held our breath. We got almost nothing done of substance that first week of November, besides eating carbs and drinking coffee and refreshing social media more times than was healthy. We ended that week by letting Caden and Brooklyn stay up late so they could watch a black woman speak, elected to the second-highest office in the land.
We stumbled to find things we were thankful for. Especially as the kids entered the dreaded phase of distance learning. We (*ahem* I) drew up schedules. We re-arranged schedules for the 48th time this year. We sat in front of screens. Lots of sitting in front of lots of screens. We blessed the teachers from homeroom to music to dance as they did all they could to engage the smallest of students.
In December, we went through the motions. We woke up every day and checked that drawn-up schedule to make it to Google Meets on time. We checked over work. We had all the Christmas presents delivered and seemed to have grocery pick-ups every other day.
But in December, we also put up Christmas decorations and it felt like hope. We may have gone overboard on the gifts this year but wrapping those up felt like hope, too. We began to administer vaccines and that felt so hopeful our collective hearts might burst. And we looked forward to 2021. Though we knew the calendar flipping over wouldn’t magically change everything, still, we pinned our hopes on that number, that year. Knowing, hoping, feeling in our bones that it would be sooner, rather than later, that we could emerge into a new and better normal.