Four Years Ago

It's Spring Break! I'm not sure I've ever needed to walk away so much in my entire life. It's made me reflective. 

During the day on Friday, several people popped by to say, "Remember the time we left for spring break and never came back?"  It was four years ago.

I'm working on my superintendent certification because Trey is making me, and this week's discussion post was about how HR processes changed as a result of COVID. 

Currently I'm reading Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. It's set during COVID. 

And I'm feeling reflective about what begin that spring break four years ago. 

Things I remembered today:

1) Work meetings from my bedroom. Lots of them. I worked from home from mid-March until June. I remember a particularly tenuous situation I had to deal with remotely - that was a challenge. But mostly I remember working with the windows open and the breeze blowing and the birds singing. And Zoom calls. 

2) I remember my 43rd birthday when there was some sort of benefit on the radio with all of these country artists, and we sat outside on the patio with margaritas while the sun set and the music played. 

3) I remember worrying about people who were "high risk." For us that was our parents. We were never too worried about getting sick ourselves (not sure why), but we wanted to be so careful as to not make someone else sick. 

4) I bought ten pounds of flour at Farm Patch because no one else had flour. I can do pretty much anything if I only have flour!

5) We planned to reopen schools that fall. The way that the people I worked with collaborated to put kids first while making every attempt to keep our staff physically and mentally safe was indescribable. From the superintendent to every principal, we worked together toward the same goal and cared for each other all the while. It was the pinnacle of what leadership can and should be. 

6) When school reopened, we opened a COVID testing center for our employees from 6-8 am every day. It was difficult to get in somewhere to get tested, so we got a bunch of tests and did it ourselves. If someone woke up not feeling well we were able to give them peace of mind or send them to the doctor. I think I worked the testing center at least several days a week (memory is funny). I bet I gave over a thousand COVID tests. And I never got COVID during that time. 

7) I think it was spring break 2021 when a vaccine was available. This memory comes up now because we had a vaccination center for our people and I worked there for a bit during spring break. I also got the vaccine despite political and other disagreements about it. I never got it again. Not for any reason except I just didn't.

8) I went to two funerals in a week. Both family members lost to COVID. The world close to me forever changed. 

9) I remember a zoom with my cousins. I don't see them often because I live farther away than most. The zoom was fun. 

That was both a terrible time and beautifully simple. I remember the sentiment that we never knew how busy we were until it was all taken away, and then further realization that all the busy and the regular day-to-day drama and small-problems-made-big were mostly irrelevant. 

Instead we stopped. We just stopped. And we cared about each other and we worked together and we appreciated all of the moments. 

And we realized what we had become in our business and in our sometimes manufactured discord. And we resolved to never do that again.  

It all started four years ago.

This spring break, whether you are one of the lucky ones who actually get a break or not, I hope we all remember the minute we knew it all stopped, and then soon after when we realized most of what we were worried about didn't matter anyway because we had the people we loved and the world conspired to come together. And that's what really matters. 

Happy Spring Break!