Two weeks.
That's the number I remember so clearly.
When my children's school closed in the spring it was just going to be two weeks. After that, the danger of Coronavirus would have passed and life would be back to normal.
Well, two weeks have turned into 24.
That's six months of the least normal life any of us could ever have imagined.
Looking back, you likely don't remember the very first time you heard the word Coronavirus. Why would you? It was a problem half a world away. What you may remember, though, is the moment it became clear that big changes were coming our way.
Perhaps it was that time your neighborhood restaurant shut its doors. Or, when your favorite sports team was told not to take the field. For many, it was the day six months ago when six Bay Area counties told their residents that at home was the safest place to stay.
Even then, none of could have come close to imagining how this virus would go on to infect every aspect of our society.
Economists, who love to calculate things, say the ultimate bill from COVID is still unknown. Thousands of businesses have shut their doors, never to reopen. Millions upon millions of workers have last their jobs and are wondering when they will once again earn a paycheck.
A wrench has been thrown into the education of a generation. Teachers and students alike have been forced to find a way to bridge the distance and schoolwork work.
Finally, more than one thousand Bay Area families have had to face the most irreversible change of all, the death of a loved one.
Add social unrest and ecological disaster to to these past six months and it's a wonder we are still holding it together. But we are, in a way.
Look around and people are still being kind to each other, making sure their neighbors are not falling through the huge crack COVID is creating. And if we all do a little more of that, we can surely get though the next six months. No matter what comes our way.
