The Future’s Past.

The weather was muggy this morning in a way it hasn’t been yet this year. I stepped outside and my body instantly felt sticky. I felt a wave of nostalgia, and then the weirdest thing happened.

I found myself yearning for the beginning of the pandemic.

For driveway dinners, where I’d set chairs up six feet apart in my front yard and make my friends pee in the backyard instead of letting them in my house (again, so sorry to them for this hahaha). For sunset walks nearly every day just because it was a chance to get out of the house. For FaceTime coffee dates. For amazon orders of tie-dye loungewear.

I know I’m looking back on things with rose-colored glasses, and I know it wasn’t all good.  For every driveway dinner, there were also tears over not being able to find toilet paper anywhere. For every lounge set, there was Jack crying and asking when he could see his teacher again. A lot of it was scary, a lot of it was lonely, a lot of it was hard. But I think, if we’d known just how scary and dark and hard things would actually get, if we’d known how long they’d be scary and dark and hard for…maybe we would have enjoyed that brief blissful month where we thought things would only last a few weeks.

I wish I could go back and tell myself to enjoy those driveway dinners, because they are going to become memories I’ll hold precious forever. To not worry over the toilet paper, because there are bigger worries coming, and eventually everyone stops being an idiot and hoarding all the paper products.

And that makes me think about now. About the things that are going on, both widespread and in my personal life. The me of right now is living in the future’s past. It makes me think about how ten months from now, there will probably be a lot I will wish I could go back and tell today me. And I’m betting I’ll wish I had enjoyed the now a little bit more when it’s the past.

So today, I will enjoy the foggy drive to drop Jack off at school. I’ll enjoy my second pot of coffee. I’ll try to find joy in my overflowing inbox, in the laundry that’s way past needing to be folded, in the library books that are ready to be picked up, in the group texts making plans to grab dinner soon.

Because these little things very well may be the big things, and I just don’t know it yet.

Love you, mean it.

Chels