I bend over, picking up socks, books, a school pencil. I’ll do laundry, check email, maybe start on dinner. The next thing and the next thing and the next thing to get through the day. Looking straight ahead and not too far back or too far forward – my strategy for dealing with the new normal. I straighten up, and the gut punch comes swiftly and unexpectedly. Hanging there, the blue dress she picked out herself, the one she didn’t get to wear to the sixth-grade dance, stolen by a virus. I wait until I’m in the shower to cry.
Kelley Dinkelmeyer is a university instructor and a mom just trying to get her family through covid intact.