Masks have become commonplace. We are all finding our way, finding the space to be distant yet together. I miss my parents desperately. Neither of them live closer than a plane ride and in moving far away, we always planned to make visits a regular thing, at least once per turn of a season. Every time Ember shows us something, says a word or a phrase that’s new, I feel sadness that they are missing so much of it. But I guess we don’t plan for pandemics, do we? 

In all this, I sure don’t miss being sick. Ember being sick. Tense with the knowing that every day I walked out of the kids room at the gym, she might be chewing on a new virus while I hung from TRX straps. 

Ember picked up her first seasonal virus of 2019 the week leading into Thanksgiving, while the world bookmarked recipes, took head counts and ran back to the store for one more box of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix.

She shared with us. We all went down. And with gaps of no longer than 11 days, most 7 or less, around and around we went this way. Sick baby, sick parent, sick parent, wellness. Sick parent, sick baby, sick parent, wellness. Repeat. Until the last week of February through the first week of March when she got Hand Foot and Mouth, I got the Mouth part, then JD got something flulike, passed it to me, my temperature was 103.7, flu test negative, pneumonia positive, and I learned that 2.5 year olds develop empathy and compassion because mine curled up on top of me  and kept me warm for days while I drowsed on the couch.

Then Ember turned up with a new virus with a new rash over the Hand Foot and Mouth blisters that still hadn’t healed.

She still has pink marks on her face from those deep and angry weeping divots. This became an ear infection, and then a perforated and leaking eardrum. 

We have had enough sickness to last at least a few years. Even flipping through the photos from those months is giving me anxiety. 

Just as we were all feeling alive again, COVID began to burn its easterly path. And so we’ve been hiding inside since late February, with intermittent isolations all through winter.  We wonder if one or both of us didn’t have this novel virus. 

And so here we are. Adjusting to a new normal. Missing hugs and friends and family, but finding the good in an unhurried life. And soon, we hope, COVID-19 will thin and break and stay behind us, the way a dark blue storm rumbles out to sea, leaving behind things we’d forgotten we’d once loved in its strange light and things to fill our children’s textbooks.