Eventually, life will go back to being “busy” and school will be an actual place with friends instead of squares on a screen. But one 2020 lesson is that we’ll try to hold onto some of this newfound family time, holding our kids a little closer, a little longer. They grow up quickly, after all.
Martina Simpkins
Great Falls, Va.
To the Editor:
One good thing about 2020: the New York Times Spelling Bee.
In mid-March 2020, it became clear it would be a while before I would see my parents again. They live in India, and I’m in California.
I’ve talked to my parents twice a day, morning and evening, every day for the past 10 years or so. Yes, we’re close. But with the virus ravaging the world, these daily calls took on a new significance in 2020. Oddly enough, at this time when connection is everything, the constraints on our lives meant there was often little to talk about.
Somewhere along the line, my mother and I began playing Spelling Bee together. We get on the phone at 7:30 a.m. Pacific time and play till we get to Genius. That half an hour of playing Spelling Bee together every morning is pure joy — and for that we’re grateful.
Sharmila Shankarkumar
Redwood City, Calif.
To the Editor:
Not to minimize the unspeakable suffering, but 2020 has also given us a crash course in mindfulness — an increased capacity to live with and tolerate uncertainty, to live in the moment. To more fully appreciate and not take for granted the people and positives we have in our lives. These lessons, if carried forward, can inform a new and improved quality of life in the “new normal” to come.
Beth Brodsky
Bronx
The writer is a clinical psychologist.
To the Editor:
It wasn’t the marriage ceremony that we originally envisioned. It was pared down from 250 attendees to 15, and we were married on a lovely October day in our city’s Botanical Gardens. Our guests wore specially designed face masks embroidered with our names and the date of our marriage. The guests were seated at least six feet apart, and the congratulatory hugs will have to wait.
Yet for us, a 2020 marriage was all the more meaningful because we have learned the power of not taking for granted those whom we love. We have learned that all of those minute annoying behaviors that grate on us daily are really minute, when that one special person is all we have in their glorious three-dimensionality.