Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, the first few weeks of this whole thing look different now. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was in London, working alongside people who had travelled from China, and we were talking about how our office in Shanghai was likely going to shut down in the coming days.
Of course, it did close. The entire country closed completely - even "essential" businesses - for two weeks. They've been gradually reopening since because it turns out that whole "Coronavirus" thing we were ignoring back in January was actually a BFD. I maybe should have figured that out faster as my international flights were empty.
Like, seriously, EMPTY. There couldn't have been but maybe 50 passengers on my flight to London and the plane was large enough to seat several hundred. I had three entire rows of seats to myself. The few people that were travelling internationally at that time were mostly wearing masks and they were already avoiding standing near other people. It took the United States until, what? March? April? Before we figured that out? (An argument could be made to say we still haven't figured it out...) Knowledge is different in other countries. What people want to believe isn't held in the same regard as scientific fact.
That's the thing that's going to be hard to explain to the girls some day. There's this whole thing going on where we allow opinions to matter excessively and we confuse what we want to be true with what is actually true. I have to think that Americans will find their way to the other side of the nonsense, and I hope it's such a thorough departure that both Mila and Alexis are SUPER confused when we tell stories from this time of epic stupidity.
In hindsight, it also seems SUPER weird that we went to Harrisburg for a dance competition a mere week before everything shut down. I'm glad we did, but that's the privilege of not having anything bad happen because of it. If things had gone sideways and dance studios from all over the state had ended up further spreading COVID-19, that weekend would seem like the biggest pile of stupid ever.
Still, since it didn't end badly, I'm glad we went. I'm glad we took the time to wander over to Hershey to check out the World of Chocolate. I'm glad we did a ton of shopping. I'm especially glad we managed to have several really good meals at restaurants - especially that one that was ice cream for dinner. When we will be able to sit inside a restaurant and freely eat ice cream again?
When will anything be the same again? Ever? When we all left work and school that last Friday before the governor shut things done (fortunately - if he hadn't things would have gotten much worse quickly), we thought we'd be back in a few weeks. I grabbed my plants from my desk at work, but everything else is still there. I now know that it will be months before I set foot near my desk again, and I won't be returning to it full-time ever. Alexis has a lunch bag full of food in her locker. We'll be throwing that away the second it returns to our possession, obviously, but will Alexis ever set foot in the middle school again? Survey says ... probably not. In a perfect world, she's at the high school in the fall, though she may not return to the same school district.
And Mila. Mila was just figuring out this whole kindergartener thing. I think the disruption is the worst for her because she doesn't have a normal to compare to. She was adjusting to changes left and right, looking forward to her first ever summer at summer camp, and everything just stopped. If I had known how different things would suddenly be for her, I would have handled much of it differently as it was happening.
Alas.
20/20 hindsight, and all that.
