It Seems Like a Whole Different Life

Sunrise in Philadelphia in October 2019.  

I happened to glance at the calendar this weekend and think that a short six months ago, it was the last weekend of October, and during the last weekend of October, our school was on "Fall Break," which meant Friday and Monday were days off from school.  

We took our sensational second grade daughter to Philadelphia for the weekend.  We saw friends we hadn't seen in ten years.  They'd never met Zoe!  We saw Independence Mall, Old City, the Liberty Bell.  We took a double-decker bus tour.  We stayed right on the Avenue of the Arts, South Broad Street.  We took the subway and went to Reading Terminal Market and went through our old neighborhoods.  We drove her through Temple Main Campus and Health Sciences Campus.

She was dazzled by the City of Brotherly Love.  Enchanted.  And we remembered what we loved so much about the city while we lived there.  We also remembered why we love living where a traffic jam is more than three cars stuck behind a farm tractor or Amish buggy.  

That trip seems like an impossible dream from a different lifetime.  And it was only six months ago!  Now I couldn't imagine just hopping in the Jeep with luggage and heading down to the southeast corner of the state.  Heck.  I can't even imagine hopping in the Jeep and just casually running across the border to Wellsville right now.  Or Corning.  Or anywhere, for that matter.  

It's not that I was a huge runner outer, Before.  I've gone long stretches of time without leaving my house.  But I did like the freedom of deciding if I wanted to stay at home or if my boot-heels wanted to go a-wandering.   

I never thought I'd look back at a time when I could just go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted and wonder to myself if I went enough.  If I knew six months ago that we'd be here on hold, would I have put some more silly miles on my Jeep, going places just because I could?  I honestly don't know.  But I wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me back in October that in the next six months, nobody would be going far from home, if they went anywhere at all.  

I don't have any more insight than that, Friends.  Other than to just say this is so weird and I just can't get past how weird it is, today.

Tomorrow will be a new day.  The sun still always rises.  Thank goodness for that!