The last time I wrote an update about my life was in 2019 after a few year hiatus (hm, deja vu). At the time, my kids were 5 and 7 and attending a University Model School. They were in a sign language club, swim club, and science club. I volunteered at their school a ton and quite a bit at the University where my husband works. I was working out sporadically and busy all around.
But there were a few things that happened before COVID shut us down for awhile.
In 2019, I wrote that I was in a busy season and had little time for reading and writing. So, you’d think that would change with a shutdown… and it did a bit. I read 47 books that year. I’d read 67 the year before, but most of those were children’s books aloud to my kids. I also listened to many hours of podcasts and in 2021, I read 59 (Thank you, Goodreads.com for keeping track for me). That infers that I didn’t read more during 2020, but less.
One thing that happened before the pandemic shut us down was death. A dear friend of ours died at 12:45am on January 1, 2020. It was sudden and no one saw it coming. He was only in his 30s and left behind a wife and 3 children. The week after the funeral, we found out that our school had died, as well. Legacy Academy will be featured in another post, but right now I will say that it was a big blow.
So, 2020 began badly here. Yet we had no idea what was coming. I was listening to the news a lot and knew of the issues that China was having with the virus. I was vigilant but not worried. In fact, we even took a homeschool trip with friends to Chicago that January. That was a blast and we vowed to travel with that family more in future. Chicago had already had its first case of COVID and the news said that she even rode the L and subway home. But we rode it over and over, unperturbed, even though I knew how gross public transit can get.
Perhaps because it was winter and we all had gloves and scarves on a lot, or perhaps because there had only been the one case at that point and the likelihood that we had ridden the same train in the same car touching the same handles without hours of an infected person was low, we all returned in good health.
COVID could have been much worse for us. We were very lucky to avoid any illness of ourselves or loved ones. It wasn’t until Christmas of 2021 that any of my immediate family got sick and that was my mother and sister. Christmas was moved to my in-laws’ house and only my other sister and her family came. Eventually, in 2022, most of my side of the family had gotten it at one point or another. On my husband’s side, his sister who worked in a hospital got it in 2020 at some point. She came through it fine. My husband and I got it in July of 2022, and it sucked. But still mild cases. Very few people associated with us has actually died from COVID. Only one member of my choir, that I know of. No member of our church. One student at LeTourneau before returning for the fall semester. All in all, we were fairly unscathed.
I watched as the world both shut down and went into chaos mode. Tons has already been written about it. I will only say that we stayed out of the fray. Living in a small city in East Texas meant we experienced none of the riots of the summer of 2020. We had more fighting about masks than many places and less than others. Our town had really good communication from the Mayor and our Governor gave regular press conferences. Things opened up early here, but that was mostly due to our low population and spread, not because people were stubborn. I continued to wear masks in public until both my husband and I were vaccinated, and then still a few places after that, depending on the numbers, which I watched like a hawk, or the concentration of people.
It is now 2022. The worse has passed by, and while there is still COVID everywhere, its effects are minor now. Still, hoping to get a booster before heading back to Michigan this Christmas.
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