Before the pandemic, we were making Christmas plans--my mom had a great deal on a villa in Ft. Lauderdale, so she grabbed it. She had hopes that she would be able to find a great deal on an additional villa before Christmas. Earlier this week, she found one and grabbed it.
That was before the CDC offered their guidelines on canceling travel for Thanksgiving. I think all of my family members wondered if there would be a similar guideline/warning just before Christmas, when it would be too late to cancel many of our travel plans (by which I mean too late to cancel and get any money back).
We've all been doing lots of reading about this disease, and we have a high degree of science literacy in my family. We are not the kind of family who has been in denial about who is at risk and who's not. By the end of the week, we were talking about whether or not we should cancel our Christmas plans.
We decided to cancel.
When I think about yesterday, a Saturday in late November in 2020, I will remember that phone conversation. It wasn't particularly traumatic. I think we all knew we were headed to that decision. But it does feel significant.
It was a bit surreal to have that conversation and then to watch several hours of Thanksgiving cooking shows on the PBS Create channel. I took a long nap and woke up and wondered if we'd really had that conversation. Had we really canceled our Christmas get together?
It's a shame that we didn't have this epiphany a week ago, before my mom snagged the extra villa. It's interesting to track these epiphanies. On Tuesday, my mom had called to tell me the good news of the extra villa. By Saturday, we were canceling.
It seems like a metaphor for the entire year.
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