My memories of the COVID years

Time capsule of COVID-19 Pandemic

Spring of 2020 - COVID Begins

I remember picking up my 6-year-old from kindergarten, and the crossing guards at school waved us goodbye while holding back tears - that was March 11, 2020.  The night before, we went out to dinner at Din Tai Fung. It was empty - which has never happened before. The world felt ominous as if it was closing in.

This was the message from WA Governor on March 11, 2020.

Quickly, roadsigns all had a theme across the state:

This week, I’m talking about my memories and life during COVID. Overall, I reflect that while it was hard to imagine what life would be like - we carried on. Adam and I adapted, our kids grew, we celebrated milestones (differently), and slowly life resumed. COVID-19 never ended - it is still here with us, but the acuteness of a global pandemic has receded. Before I forget it, I thought I’d write down what I remember - the images, the stories, and the memories.

The next few weeks went by in a blur - I sent our nanny home, I canceled cleaners, and we drove to our cabin every weekend. We had gone to Costco at the beginning of the month, so we had no toilet paper crisis - I guess that was lucky. I figured we had enough until this thing was going to pass.

As a parent to two children aged 2 and 6, my job was clear - keep calm and carry on. So we went on walks, came up with science experiments in our backyard, found remote playgrounds, hung out as a family, played games online and drove back and forth between our cabin and our home.

Intellectually, I had, by now Googled the Spanish Flu and knew that pandemics last for one to two years. However, I desperately wanted to believe that everything will go back to normal in 2 weeks - just as the shutdown orders said. Two months later, when I finally stepped into a grocery store, I admitted to myself that life will forever be different.

Frontier of COVID

I worked at Microsoft in 2020 - and had a trip to China planned for middle of February. By mid January, the trip was cancelled due to a warning from the CDC of a viral outbreak abroad (COVID-19).

Kirland (where we lived in 2020) was the first place in the US with a confirmed case on February 28, 2020. This is a picture of our local market a day later where people started stocking up on food - you’d think we were preparing for a snow day.

The clip below is from the Economist on March 4, 2020 - as the world started talking about flattening the curve. In our community, we have been talking about this for at least a week before this article came out.

After the stay at home order kicked in, the playgrounds also closed - as a parent, I had a moment of panic that day because I didn’t know how we were going to stay sane. Luckily, the notion that COVID could be transferred through playgrounds was debunked quickly.

Restaurants

We also found the restaurants that adapted to COVID - our favorite one was a nearby (DERU) farm-to-table family place - overnight, it switched to a socially distanced restaurant with curbside pickup. The first time we ordered from them, there was a handwritten note wishing us well and thanking us for the business. Din Tai Fung (family favorite dim sum place), our local pizza chain (Pagliacci), and a steak house for fancy occasions, became our go-to.

Masks and Acceptance

When my colleagues from China offered us to send us some N95 masks, I got out my sewing machine and sewed Adam and I each a cloth mask. Then I made one for my parents. Humanity is a funny thing - even in the worst and most uncertain times, there was kindness and grace across the globe toward people you knew.  In August, I took the kids to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens in Bellevue, and I made them wear ill-fitting masks that I had sewn a few months prior. After that day, I went online and ordered masks in bulk - and I finally cried. I felt grief for the new reality without an end date that we were going to live in.

Zoom Life and Animal Crossing

With the extra time that we got, we gravitated to connect deeper with family and our closest friends around the country and at times the globe. We had a standing call with my family on Zoom every Sunday, Adam had one with his high school friends and we did an almost weekly call with our college crew where we played games online. Up until that moment, Adam and I had been part of a ~15 year long dinner club that met every Monday night. We converted that to a regular online call where we caught up and played games.

For Christmas right before COVID started, I got a Nintendo Switch and had just started playing Animal Crossing (a game where you tend to your island, grow fruit, and express yourself through an avatar). During COVID, I played a lot of Animal Crossing with coworkers and friends as well.

Also the learning curve on figuring out how to use online tools was real:

Baking with Grandma

I started baking - cinnamon rolls, challah and eventually made my way to my first Bundt cake. It started because I felt an acute need to connect with my older grandparents. My paternal grandmother has always been a wonderful baker and during COVID, she taught me how to bake over FaceTime. I remember when I was working on my first Yule log - I was scared of not being able to flip the cake out on my baking sheet. She sternly said into the camera  - “Do not be afraid of the dough! You are in charge.”  I’ll remember that forever.

New Normal - Now What?

We were able to better social distance at our cabin than in the city, so as restrictions loosened (restaurants opened to 50% capacity), we had visitors come through - and life continued.

We canoed in the lake, floated the river with friends, made a time capsule (we buried an N95 mask in it), and celebrated Adam’s birthday.

I remember feeling grateful for more time with family and also questioning my professional purpose. Did I have the most impact I could in a large organization as a middle manager, or was there more? It was, on one hand, scary to contemplate a change, but on the other hand, I went through an acute period where I wondered if the world was going to end...so changing jobs in that context didn’t seem as scary.

Remote Schooling 1st Graders

As summer days passed, it became clear that school was not going back in session in person.  What I knew for sure was that homeschooling a 1st grader and working full-time was not an option. There was a newly minted three-year-old in the mix, too, but I held out hope (and was correct) that private preschool would reopen. In hindsight, I’m amazed that I had the sanity and clarity of thought to not take on juggling remote learning. I credit Adam, who has always been great at naming when we need help and getting it.

So, using our Kindergarten class WhatsApp, we found 4 other like-minded families who wanted to form a pod. The parent group included a couple of product managers, parents from the real estate industry, salespeople, a lawyer, a designer, and an airplane engineer. We were all working parents and all on the same page with COVID safety and compliance and were committed to not “go it alone.”

We found a tutor, set up a weekly house rotation and we were off to the races. It was my single biggest lifeline during COVID - we stuck together as these five families. We had a weekly Friday night wine-down, celebrated every kid’s birthday together and hosted a progressive Halloween party. These became my people.  

We decorated for first day of school - since it happened at home:

Grief During the Pandemic - Holidays

The other thing I remember was how sad I was to not be spending Christmas or New Year’s with our extended families. I remember feeling an acute loss of connection time. I still have 3 living grandparents and especially in that moment, I wondered how many years we still have together and how important it was not to miss these milestones. But we made the best of it - Adam and the girls made meme videos, we opened presents on Zoom and I baked.

Christmas ornament I ordered on Etsy to remember this time:

Laughter is survival

We lived through history. And as I flipped through my pictures during this time, I saw a lot of memes, jokes, and online comedy. I am reminded of how resilient the human kind is and how much laughter eases pain and fear. Here were some of the ones I found on my phone from March to June of 2020:

There was a series of these videos, but the first one at the beginning of the pandemic is my favorite.

New Beginnings

Two things happened in 2021 - Adam and I started Mind the Beet on January 1 of 2021 and in March 2021 I left my job at Microsoft and took a remote role at Guild in Colorado. Never in a million years did I think I’d take a remote first job but in early 2021, it was apparent that we were years away from going back to being in person.

As expected, COVID didn’t really end, it became a thing we live with. When school went back in person in the spring of 2021, my oldest and I were walking, and she reflected about the good things that came out of COVID - she loved her learning pod, and we got to spend a lot more time as a family. We got lucky that we all had mild cases of COVID (not until 2022) and that no one close to us died.  

I think of these years - 2020- 2022 (ish) - as sitting on the beach and watching the waves ebb and flow. Sometimes I was able to swim and sometimes I need to sit out a big wave that it wasn’t safe to be in.  There were good moments of joy and connection balanced with immense pressure in tech to deliver and requirement to remain calm for my children.

Gratitude

What the world went through and what my family went through in 2020 was big and hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime thing. At the end of the day, my family specifically, got really lucky. To finish, here are the 5 things I’m grateful for out of this experience.

1. No one died in my immediate circle from COVID-19. I do not take that for granted.

2. Science - vaccines got developed at record speed, and life resumed.

3. My marriage survived this - I have friends whose didn’t.

4. The girls are ok - they were loved during this time, well taken care of and their academic and social development continued.

5. I finally got hobbies - I did not really have any before COVID but now I bake, and write and am a more interesting person for it.