Both my husband and I have received both doses of the vaccine. The kids are back in person four days a week. We have tickets to see a hockey game in less than two weeks. The kids are signed up for summer camp. I have a schedule for the summer swim meets for the kids input into our family calendar. While I still don’t know if and when I’ll be back on campus for work, the expectations is that it will be business as usual for the students and faculty in the fall.

I am so tremendously proud of how my kids have not only weathered but grown over the past year and half. I spoiled the hell out of them, in a financial position to indulge in just about anything they requested that we purchase in order to make the pandemic more tolerable: a loft bed and desk, new video games, paint supplies, craft supplies, book-making supplies, sewing supplies, baking supplies, a new wardrobe, scrapbooking supplies…How could I say no? We were stuck at home, we could afford it, and what else was there to do? But they strengthened friendships, developed new skills, explored who they were and who they wanted to be without pressure.

This is not to say that things have been easy, or that we haven’t all struggled at certain points in our own way. But I think I can safely say that my kids are coming out of this better people than they were when they entered the pandemic. Part of that is just the age that they are – my daughter had two birthdays over the pandemic, starting this whole ordeal when she was still 12, and now she is 14. My son is now 12 and a half. They are both finishing up at one school before starting at another in the fall (high school for the daughter, middle school for the son). They are ready, both in terms of life getting back to normal, but also in maturity.

There are days that I barely recognize them, and not just because they have entirely changed their look or grown four inches or their voices have changed. They have grown and it has been a unique experience to be so present to see it happen in real time, all together at home all the time, listening in on conversation (THEY ARE SO LOUD I CANNOT HELP IT), hearing them learn, living in the moment because there is nowhere else to be. I think, no I know we will all be relieved when we are no longer together the majority of the time. It’s what they need, to keep growing. It’s what I need, to maintain my sanity.

We can’t predict how this extended moment in their lives will mark them moving on – will it be remembered as temporary blip or a monumental event? ADHD memory is a strange thing, and it will probably end up being both those things simultaneously. So much happened while we were stuck at home with nothing to do. For one of my kids, nothing happened to them and so the time passed unnoticed. For the other, it seems everything happened to them and this time has passed with marks and scabs and scars of varrying degrees. I’m not even sure we’re through the worst of it, but we’re through the most of it, and that’s not nothing.

We will never forget 2020-2021, the year(s) everything changed, regardless of how space the memory takes in our minds. Maybe this is just another change for them in a long line of major changes (moving, changing states, changing cities, changing schools, changing dance studios, changing swim teams) they have been subjected to, another seismic shift that was completely out of their control. I am grateful that it happened when it did, at the ages they were, at the stage in our careers we were, in the place we were. I don’t know if either of them feel the same way, but that’s what time does – brings perspective. I don’t know what the perspective will be – I can only hope for the best.

I am, finally, proud of myself as a parent. Grateful that I got my mental health shit taken care of before this hit, although I couldn’t have known my daughter’s early teen years would be this chaotic, I knew that it was necessary to at least be able to survive. I am sure it saved us, getting the help when I did. I am proud that we weathered this together, as a family, and that we aren’t that worse for ware. This isn’t to say that those who didn’t shouldn’t be proud, or that I am somehow better, just that…

We often aren’t allowed to take pride in the job we have done as parents. We all should be proud of ourselves as we move towards the end of the pandemic. We did the best we could. We did the best we could. We should be proud, we should celebrate, no matter how we felt in moments of disaster and guilt and hurt and sadness and terror and uncertainty. There is no manual for any of this, but definitely not this (waves hands around).

We aren’t yet on the other side of this, the after-time. But I went to a hockey game last night, and the game was shit, but as a friend pointed out, we’re all tired even the hockey players. My kids are going to swim this summer, go to camp, I’m taking vacation time without guilt. I can see an ending, another beginning is coming into focus. I am left almost speechless by the feeling of gratitude I’m experiencing.

Maybe that’s what hope feels like.