I’ll Take the Beer.

The moment is just as vivid today as it was nine months ago. The director of my two-year-old’s school called and told me that his school was shutting down. Huh? I had to ask her to repeat herself, because surely she didn’t just tell me that my sweet, overly energetic, very tiring toddler couldn’t go to school. Must just be the newborn haze I’m in. Of course she didn’t. “Hopefully for just a couple of weeks,” she said. Crap. The tiniest half-Swede turned 4 weeks old that day. I had no idea what I was going to do with a newborn and a toddler home all day, by myself, for two whole weeks. Two weeks. Riiiiight.

I assume living through a pandemic was not on many people’s bucket lists. When I first learned of the Spanish Flu many years ago, of course it didn’t cross my mind that history would repeat itself. Nope, not possible. Approximately one-third of people were infected with the Spanish Flu across the world, resulting in millions of deaths. Not even originating in Spain, to the Spaniards, it was known as the French Flu. Kind of like coronavirus came from beer? 🤔 Jokes. Here we are 100 years later…wearing masks, bathing in hand sanitizer, and saying a prayer as the person in line behind us at the grocery store coughs a little too close to our 6-ft bubble. Definitely possible.

In the beginning of the pandemic, there were rumors that Corona beer sales would plummet due to its namesake. Quite the opposite happened. In a little over a month, sales increased over 20%, and it was crowned the number 1 beer brand in the world by the 2020 Brand Finance Beers 50 list. I also heard that some people kept drinking Corona in hopes it would prevent them from getting it. 🤨 Whatever makes you sleep at night. I’ll take mine with a lime, please.😝

Toilet paper and any product labeled as a disinfectant quickly became scarcities as the coronavirus started making its rounds. Flour, bread flour in particularly, shortly followed. Arkansans are used to seeing empty bread and milk aisles at the first sign of bad weather, which I have never understood. 20% chance of snow? “Let’s go grab a loaf of Wonder bread and a gallon of Coleman’s finest.” Said me never. There are much finer things in life. Coffee?✔️M&Ms?✔️ Wine?✔️ Essentials. So, when the bread-making craze flooded every social media feed and news outlet, and flour and yeast shelves became some of the emptiest at every grocery store across the nation, I was slightly baffled. Why bread? Wonder no longer acceptable? To whatever bread-making video that probably went viral sparking interest across the nations and inspiring so many (most importantly my friends) to start baking bread, thank you. As I have yet to try my hand at it, I have eaten several loaves thanks to some fabulous people. Said fab people…it’s been a while.😆

2020 will never be forgotten. If one didn’t live through it, they will learn about it in school, read about it on the internet, or hear their predecessors tell stories about the virus that plagued the entire world. Too many lives were lost. Many lives were made. Some families thrived. Some barely survived. Isolation made some lonely. Others longed to be alone. We were all affected in different ways. It wasn’t an easy year for me, but even on the toughest days I still had blessings to count and a new day to look forward to—which was not taken for granted. As 2020 comes to a close, I will always treasure the extra time I got with my family and the memories we made. I will look back on all of the harder times and see the resilience that resulted from them. But even with all of the good that came from the year overshadowed by Covid-19 (Corona), I’ll still take the beer. 🍻

Side Notes:

• Something is definitely not right with the world when one-ply toilet paper becomes such a hot commodity that you are limited to buying one package—when you can find it. A bit rough and slightly see-through, yet still better than the alternative…

• 95% of the world’s population had never even used the word quarantine before 2020, and now it’s one of the most used words (both as a verb and a noun) in history. I might have made that up—but you know I’m right.
• Covid Baby Syndrome is a term that will later be found in the medical journals describing babies born in 2020. The tiniest half-Swede still cries when people outside of her immediate family even look at her like they want to hold her.
• I’m sure we will soon see lots of posts about how productive people were in 2020 and how many things got accomplished with all of the extra downtime. If you are anything like me, you are just glad you made it to the end, which is a huge accomplishment in itself. You’re welcome for the affirmation. I needed it too. 😘

Big Hugs. Lots of Love.

P.M.T.