Today marks one week into January. It seems like everyone was looking forward to a new year more than usual this year due to the awfulness of 2020. Of course, we all know that just changing from 12/31 to 1/1 isn’t going to make that much of a difference in our personal lives, let alone in the global sense. Still, there is hope around the corner as a vaccine is available. And a new year signifies a new start.

And yet…

I’m not sure I’m ready for a new start. Yes, all this sitting around and going nowhere and seeing no one has made me stir crazy. Stir crazy, but also unmotivated. I miss my friends, but I don’t want to leave my house. I have plenty of time to work on home projects, but no desire to do them. I am bored and lonely, but feel anxiety about going out. It’s not even the virus anymore. It’s just me.

We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas at home alone. It was just the four of us. And as sad as we were to forgo our annual trip to see my family in Michigan, there was a simplicity and quiet without all the chaos and busyness of previous years.

Side note: For Thanksgiving dinner we used our Good China. For the very first time. After 23 years. It is called Palace and is made by Pickard in case you are interested. (You bet I still remember the name of it.) We paired it with our silver. (Romance of the Sea, by Wallace). Also never used. I literally had to unwrap it from the original plastic packaging. Both my kids said, “Where did we get this stuff?”

During break, the kids and I spent a lot of time together. We baked. We talked. We laughed. We made six different kinds of cookies and delivered them to friends. We made hot cocoa bombs. We played board games. We drove around and looked at Christmas lights. We opened gift after gift after gift. Yes, I overdid it. No, I don’t care. We watched lots of movies. And yep, we spent a lot of time on electronics.

Even though I look forward to when this pandemic is over, there is a part of me that has a vague anxiety about things getting back to normal. “Normal” being hanging out with friends and going out to eat and driving kids to soccer and guitar and baseball. “Normal” being in-person school and soccer tournaments and going on vacation. “Normal” being Greek Camp and sleepovers and swimming at the pool. In other words, “back to normal” means over-scheduled and overwhelmed and never home and everyone eating dinner at different times while looking at their phone. Remind me again why we are trying to get back to this?

Time slips away and I look at my 15-year-old and realize he’s shaving and driving and I only have two more years left with him until he is gone for good. My 12-year-old, who was in grade school a year ago, will be in high school in a year and a half. I just want to absorb every minute that I have with them.

Someday they will look back and tell their kids about the worst year of their life. Where they were cooped up inside and there was nothing to do and they couldn’t go to school and they couldn’t play sports and they didn’t travel and they were bored all winter. And someday I will tell those same kids about the time where I got to have my babies near me for a whole year and I didn’t have to share them with anyone. Where we played board games and did puzzles and watched movies and baked cookies and stayed home all the time.

And how it was a year I will savor forever.

So make the best of this test 
And don't ask why
It's not a question
But a lesson learned in time
It's something unpredictable
But in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life
--Green Day