Twenty-twenty

This post has been ruminating in me for the last few years. I have held a certain amount of nostalgia for 2020, specifically for Pandemic Summer.

We were especially fortunate to have Pandemic Summer arrive at that exact moment in our lives. A few years earlier, the kids would have been toddlers; a few years later, teenagers.

It was, until this year, the last time I had a vacation in even the “work-cation” mode. In fact, we went backpacking or camping five times that year. (Backpacking trips — with kids, anyway — are definitely Type 2 fun in my opinion. They are not “vacations” in the sense of being relaxing.)

I think the best thing about Pandemic Summer, though, was that we had a break from Organized Activities. We had no particular schedule driving our days, so we could spend them doing what I would have recognized as summer stuff from my own childhood: aimless roaming, mostly.

I know this is personal,, not social. But I have heard a few other people express a surprising nostalgia for 2020, and I get where it’s coming from.