The Before Times.

One of my students was telling me a story about something that happened “in the before times”. When I asked what she meant by that, she said, “Oh, you know, like when we used to be able to go to school and see our friends and do stuff like that.”

Ah yes, the before times. The phrase resonated with me, as did this photo call from NYT, asking people to submit photos and memories of normal life before the pandemic.

It was honestly hard for me to remember what life was like this before this, so I scrolled back in my photo roll for reminders.

The few weeks before everything shutdown were a bit of a blur for me, particularly busy seasons in both my personal and professional life. Both my parents and Sean’s parents came to visit us within the span of two and a half weeks during the end of February and the beginning of March . They not only visited, but stayed with us, which involved a few extra Ikea trips and Sean assembling a new bed for them. It was of course wonderful to see both sets of parents, but also extra busy, as life with visitors often seems to feel, all during my busiest month at work all year. My school went through our huge accreditation visit right before the pandemic officially hit its peak, so the end of February and the beginning of March were full of way more work on the evenings and weekends as we all prepared for that. And then, somewhere in that whirlwind, Sean planned a sweet weekend getaway for us to Santa Monica. We stayed in a fun hotel, which gave us loads of complimentary champagne and ate at Gjelina and went out for fun cocktails and walked freely among crowds at the Venice Boardwalk. It was relaxing and wonderful and we had no idea that most of those activities would sound dangerous within a week or two. Honestly, we were so disconnected that weekend that I barely took any pictures, barely have anything to document our last little trip, that last little taste of normalcy we had before the world all changed.

It all changed so fast, huh?