These Are The Stories We Will Tell About 2020

When we are asked about this time, we will tell them about how our stovetops were always dirty, and how much we cooked.

We will tell them about the origins, the warnings, the surreality, the grief.

We will tell them about where we were when we finally realized that this was more than just a precaution. We will tell them about where we were when we finally realized that life was going to change forever.

We will tell them about whole cities cheering for their medical staff each night at dusk.

We will tell them that we couldn’t hug our loved ones.

We will tell them about being alone.

We will tell them how we sent money to our friends who are nurses and doctors, we will tell them about the quirky, dated past times that got us through.

We will tell them about the urgency, the quiet, the life-changing, deafening stillness.

We will tell them that everyone wore a mask.

We will tell them that it was too hard to read the news.

We will tell them that every store shut down at once.

We will tell them that more people lost their jobs in one week than they had in decades combined.

We will tell them that we got checks in the mail.

We will tell them about the empty shelves.

We will tell them of the cancelled weddings. We will tell them about having virtual parties.

We will tell them how we all worked from home or, really, stayed home tried to work when everything was too uncertain to think clearly half of the time.

We will tell them that we quickly learned what “essential personnel” was and we never saw those jobs the same way again.

We will tell them of the kids of the medical professionals who stayed with relatives because their parents didn’t have enough masks.

We will tell them that lives were lost.

We will tell them that more were spared.

We will tell them that, at the beginning, nobody believed it would be this big.

We will tell them how, slowly, we realized we were wrong.

We will tell them that the way that a virus can spread is paralyzingly scary. We will tell them that the world as they know it now did not always exist this way. We will tell them that there was a time when not everyone knew to wash their hands for 20 seconds and sanitizing wasn’t standard practice and shoes were worn in the house and nobody knew what the phrase “flatten the curve” was or had heard of Wuhan.

We will tell them that what is commonplace now was inventive then.

We will tell them about the helpers.

We will tell them that it was as real as anything could be.

And we will tell them that the recovery was, too.