By LYNN HANRAHAN
Los Alamos

An upside to the horrible Covid pandemic would be a more balanced approach to determining how indispensable we really are in our everyday life. Is my presence at work really a matter of life and death? Are my kids really going to fall behind if we miss a few days of school to be on the safe side?

I raised three kids in the two decades immediately preceding the Pandemic. During these years we probably caught every common germ known to man. I once spent twenty two months having at least one kid sick with something — and we were always the outdoorsy, healthy types. It takes a toll.

Now that all the kids are living far away it’s sort of nice — winters without stocks of medication. I especially don’t miss a parent dropping by and mentioning what a relief it was for Junior to get out for a few hours since the other kids were home with fevers, coughs, stomach issues, etc. A month or so before lockdown I was truly disgusted when my youngest’s boss at a local eatery insisted they not miss work even if sick. Her one coworker’s mom took her son to the ER directly from his shift. Covid sort of still seemed like a joke.

Miss a sport’s practice? God forbid. I don’t miss the pre-Covid world where people walked around sick as could be. As a homeschooling parent I would have to argue that some of our greatest feats happened when we were couchbound. We read through every possible children’s book series — Narnia, the Borrowers, the Hunger Games, Harry Potter and thousands more. We were not falling behind anything or anyone.

The winter before the Pandemic I stopped by a friend’s house not thinking too much of it when she mentioned she thought she had a bug.  Anyhow one case of the flu and having lost thirty pounds later I finally fit into this cute pink Calvin Klein acid washed miniskirt, which I had bought back in college. It had found its way to the big bag of dress-up stuff. It would have been sort of fun had I not been too sick to stand up for a couple of months.

No, Mr. Skolnik, I don’t miss the self-important pre-Pandemic world. I like this one just fine. Sometimes life’s greatest gifts happen when you’re just hanging back with your hanky and a good book.