I didn’t know the extent of the global pandemic we have on our hands today when I decided to fly home for Spring Break in March of 2020. I was under the impression that I would be back home for a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two at the very most, before packing my bags again, getting on a 16-hour plane ride, and going back to campus. It’s safe to say that “spring break” definitely lasted a lot longer than I had imagined, and the last ten months have been… interesting, to say the very least. It’s been a very big shift from life in college, some of it bitter and some of it sweet.
The pandemic and the stay-at-home order that came with it allowed me to spend a lot of time with my family. We laughed together, cried together, got on each other’s nerves and ultimately got through four months of ups and downs. Working from home can be difficult when all four members of your family are on their own schedules. My mom and dad worked their regular jobs from home, my sister attended classes for school, and I stayed awake through the night keeping up with my lectures in local California time. Still, even with the excruciatingly slow Wi-Fi, overloading with all four of our Zoom calls, and the constant, “Keep it down! I’m in a meeting!” the time we spent together was like no other.
By the end of the four months, when the order was lifted and things started to open up, my parents got back to working in-person and it was just my sister and me studying remotely. Still, with social distancing measures, we spent numerous weekends together at home cooking meals, ordering takeout from new places, finding movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime (I honestly think we exhausted almost all of our movie options and had moved on to second showings of the same movie at some point), and playing games. The pandemic even got us to finally adopt a dog, something my sister had spent years convincing my parents to do.
As 2020 ended, I figured it was time for me to return back to my apartment in Davis. I was tired of doing midterms at the bright and early time of 3 a.m. in my local time zone, and figured it was time I attempted to try and get some “normalcy” back into our lives, as long as it was safe for me to. I was excited to fly back, see my roommate, and be living in my own space again. Little did I know what was waiting for me. Now, don’t get me wrong, college is great and living life on your own schedule has its own perks, but I had no idea how much I was going to miss home.
Coming back to campus this time around almost felt harder than it did in my first year. When I was a freshman, I didn’t know what adventures lied ahead and what my life would look like. Now that I know what college life looks like and I got to spend an extra ten months at home in the midst of it all, it’s hard not to miss the comfort and safety I felt in my own house. The feeling of not having to worry about buying food, cooking, or even cleaning up is really a blessing in disguise. At home, it was a combined effort of my entire family, but here at my apartment it’s just me responsible for myself. There’s no one to blame but myself if things aren’t how they should be, and there’s no one to pat my head and tell me everything’s going to be okay since my mom isn’t around to see if I may be having a rough day. Looking back now, I realize how much time I spent complaining, frustrated with the situation I was in instead of enjoying the bonus time I got to have at home, something that wouldn’t have happened any other year. It was true quality time that we got to spend together, and I feel like we all unlocked new dimensions of our relationships with each other.
All this to say, this time has taught me to never take anything for granted. In all the time you spend wishing for something different, you forget to appreciate what you already have that’s right in front of your eyes. It’s been a week of being back in Davis, and as I’m getting back into the swing of things around here, my heart is back home with my family, and I hope they know how much I love and miss them.