It’s day one of semester two in this COVID school year. 

Since Thanksgiving, we’ve been on remote-only school.  Her brother’s return from college meant two weeks of quarantine—both for Thanksgiving and again for Christmas.  The school system decided to keep all students on a remote-only schedule for an extra week, to ward off potential COVID cases.  With various national holidays thrown in, she ended up with only one possible in-school day in January—which seemed pointless to everyone involved.

But now, she’s back to her one-day of in-person instruction per week.  It’s kind of jarring: she’s rather likes her extra hours of sleep, the fact that she can casually eat breakfast while in class, and the comfort of doing school work while curled up in front of the fire. 

Reality hit this morning, and we’re back to driving to school four days a week.  Three of those days, I have about an hour and fifteen minutes to “do something” if I stay in town… or a scant forty minutes if I drive home and back.  I’m re-adjusting my day.

And, I am reminding myself how fortunate I am to have this extra time with her.  That’s a silver lining, staring me full on, even if it took me a bit to see this one today.