The One Thing I Miss About the Pandemic

Yesterday marked four years since a deadly tornado ripped through Nashville, destroying countless businesses and homes and displacing residents and small business owners alike. And to think, just a week or so later, the entire world was hit by another type of tornado: a global pandemic. In fact, many Nashvillians, especially those who lived in or near the damaged areas, will couple the two events as they reflect on the early days of the pandemic. For example: I remember shopping for household cleaners and toilet paper for tornado victims, only to encounter empty shelves for an entirely different reason: people stockpiling supplies in response to the panic surrounding this mysterious disease that was sweeping the world. It was a strange “wait, is this business closed because of tornado damage or COVID?” type of experience.

Every once in a while, I’ll look back and read some things I published on this blog — and some of my early pandemic posts are especially interesting to me, including one of my favorites: The Moment the Whole World Paused. At that point, we were only a few weeks into what we thought would be a short-lived “shutdown” and I was already seeing some of the benefits of it all. And now, nearly four years later, I can see even more benefits of that time, and what it did for us as a collective society and for myself, on a more personal level.

Don’t get me wrong — I am not glad the pandemic happened whatsoever. I say this in that post explicitly: even if one person died, it would be a tragic event. And if you’ll remember, a lot more than one person died. So I am not longing for a return to the pandemic, or even saying it was a historic event we should look favorably upon. It was horrible. Nurses and doctors worked tirelessly, combatting a deadly disease we knew little about. Teachers were logging into Zoom to try to manage restless students on a 2D screen. And parents turned into teachers on the other side of that screen, often juggling their own work and daily tasks while also managing their own anxiety about the uncertainty of the world. So many were sent home from their jobs, either to work remotely or not work at all, as businesses struggled to stay afloat. And as a result, many small business owners had to give up on a dream and shutter their doors after trying to make takeout work for a few months and the checks from the government ran out. And pretty much everyone else argued online and in person — choosing a side over every aspect of the pandemic and other topics that emerged tangentially: masks, vaccines, Black Lives Matter, etc. And as a result of all these things, mental health declined at rapid rates. All of that was horrible.

So no, I don’t think the pandemic was necessarily a golden era for America or the world. In fact, it was some of our darkest days in recent history.

And yet, there is one element that I do miss. And even though it has only been four years since the pandemic began, I almost forgot about this phenomenon until I was reminded after digging through some old posts, both on the blog and on Instagram.

It’s this: I miss that pause we were all forced to take together. Somewhere in the middle of March 2020, overnight, our calendars were completely wiped clean. At that point, Brandon and I had started to get more involved with our church and had strengthened various friendships after living in Nashville for a few years, so it was common for us to have social obligations several nights after work and on the weekends. And those suddenly disappeared. Don’t get me wrong — I am extremely thankful for those “obligations” (also known as friendships) and nothing — not even FaceTime — replaces in-person connection with another human being. However, hitting the pause button forced us to reevaluate our priorities and detox from the go-go-go pace we found ourselves in.

Instead, Brandon and I spent pretty much every waking minute together, as we both worked from home (before it was cool, I might add). And as spring emerged (on my birthday — the first time it had fallen on March 19 since 1896!), we spent much of that time outside, tending to the garden, going on extended walks through the neighborhood, working side by side on our laptops in the backyard, throwing the ball for Olive, and eating most meals out on the deck. I even remember walking to Broadway in downtown Nashville (IYKYK) and encountering an eerie once-in-a-lifetime scene: there were no humans and very few cars passing by. It was strange but also oddly refreshing, to see that even the street that never sleeps was taking a much-needed nap.

I am already nostalgic about the summer of 2020, which was a strange juxtaposition of chaos and calm. In a lot of ways, everyone was “over” the initial novelty of the pandemic, which led to division and conflict on so many levels. But also, it felt like we as adults were granted a summer break as if we were back in elementary school. As we began to emerge from complete isolation, people hosted backyard happy hours, had drive-thru baby showers, lingered a little longer in conversation with neighbors, sipped IPAs on brewery patios, and set up unique distanced events of all kinds. Sure, it wasn’t ideal, but it was clear we all wanted to be together again.

Sometimes the absence of something helps you realize just how much you valued that thing to begin with. And that was certainly the case with the pandemic. Stripping away all human contact — hugs, handshakes, and even just standing near someone without thinking about air particles for once — makes you long for it that much more.

I just don’t want to forget what that time was like — because it already feels like a distant memory. In the midst of the pandemic, I shared a lot of these thoughts of appreciating the slowing down — more than once, actually. It’s clear I was longing for the pace of our life to slow down, and was grateful for a collective “excuse” that made that happen.

So four years later, I’m choosing to remember one of the only positives that emerged from that time. Historians and statistician are already covering some of the more negative effects from the pandemic — mental health declining, gaps in milestones for kids, the economic impact, etc. I just wish there was a way to measure how the break in activities impacted our pace of life. And yet, it’s nearly impossible to pin down a metric of that kind. Did our blood pressure drop? Did we spend more quality time with our significant others and kids than we otherwise would have? Did we hug our grandmas a little tighter when we saw them next? Did we begin to appreciate the things we had taken for granted? I like to think the answer is “yes” to all of those questions.