The historian in me thinks it’s important to mark the one-year anniversary of the pandemic. The writer in me would rather not. Maybe it’s insecurity — there are far better writers than me sharing their thoughts right now. Maybe it’s sensitivity — I’ve just started to bounce back from a really hard year and I don’t want to revisit the pain. Maybe it’s my forward-thinking nature which would rather focus on what’s to come.
One of the podcasts I follow has been doing short retrospectives on how we all reacted to the start of the pandemic, and I have to work hard not to cry when I listen. The “lost year” started for my husband and me on Friday, March 13, 2020. The day before, I’d been at a middle school speaking to 600 students. The author visit went as it usually would, except for exchanging fist bumps and toe taps with the teachers and students instead of handshakes and hugs. That night, my husband and I went to a networking event at the local dinner theater, followed by dinner and the show. We noticed a smaller turnout than usual. I heard a few people had cancelled out of caution regarding this new illness, but the rest of us thought we were safe if we didn’t touch each other, and besides, it was really just a bad flu.
The next day, we awoke to discover my husband’s company had ordered everyone to work from home. And I watched as my inbox lit up with…
