The Pandemic Smelled Like Peanut Butter Cookies

What I miss about when the world shut down

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When the pandemic started, my kids did school on the kitchen table. I worked upstairs in my office, winding down a job I loved. There was an important grant that needed to be finished before I signed off completely. My kids, then 6 and 9, had finished their schoolwork and I could hear them downstairs giggling.

When they heard my office door open, they yelled, “No! Not yet! We’re not ready!” So I stayed on the sidelines. Double-checked a paragraph. Slid the grant into a manila envelope to mail — yes, it was an old school grant program — and tidied my desk.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I had followed a gut feeling and put in my notice to an organization I loved, with people I adored, in mid-February 2020. I planned a smooth transition out, but that was disrupted by a tiny crown-shaped virus that rocked the world over.

My family’s earliest pandemic days looked like mom frazzled working, the kids doing lessons I made up about Amelia Earhart and the Wright Brothers, and mid-sized gray totes packed with my version of survivalist gear: popcorn, band-aids, butter (lots — who wants the world to end without butter?), a year supply of daily contacts (I was flooded with fear about the end-days and not being able to read), 20lb…