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  2020-12-25

  New Traditions

  The pandemic marked a turning point for my family. A few weeks before the March 2020 lockdown, my grandmother was hospitalized then placed in her final nursing home. Although my family knew the Alzheimers and cancer were progressing, we never expected a pandemic to make letting go even more difficult. Shortly after her arrival in the nursing home, the building closed down for all outside visitors. For the entire summer of 2020, my family and I had to watch grandma through a screened window. By the time we were finally able to go inside the nursing home to touch her again, it was only because her time was coming to an end. By then, my grandmother only recognized my grandfather, the rest of us were strangers. My grandmother was in many ways the glue of our family. To lose her at a time when we could not see each other in person at holidays was extra difficult, but we adapted and even started new traditions. As a Polish family, we always have pierogi and fish on Christmas Eve and we usually purchased our pierogi from local churches that handmade the delicious dumplings every year. However with the pandemic, most churches did not sell pierogi in 2020 to protect their older community members who made the pierogi. Therefore, we decided to attempt for our first time to make our own pierogi from scratch. Admittedly, the pierogi we made in 2020 were not the best (and we made over 300 of them!), but we did not give up. In December 2021, our families could once again gather in person – our first Christmas together without grandma. We made our own pierogi, and this time my cousins were able to join and help. Not only did the pierogi turn out much better in 2021, but a new tradition became cemented. Although the pandemic provided many hardships, I can't help but be thankful for the two years of stillness and uncertainty it provided. The pandemic allowed me to return to my hometown, reconnect with my family, and start a new chapter in my family's history. I think my grandma would be really proud of our new tradition.
• 2020-12-24

  Breaking Tradition while the clock continues to Tick

  Every year since I was a child I always looked to the holidays for multiple great reasons. When I was young of course the idea of getting presents always trumped the other great qualities that comes with Christmas. As I grew older, I started to appreciate what these holidays really meant to me. That is family, seeing everyone all together happy for a moment in time like nothing else mattered. When Covid hit now over a year ago it seemed like a bad dream that would pass in a few weeks, but a few weeks turned into a few months which turned it over a year now. When Christmas came around this year, we knew it was going to be different and that was okay with me. What really upset me was that I wouldn’t be able to see those I’m closest to and those I cherish my time with. I am mostly referring to my grandparents, on both sides of my family I have loving grandparents who are always a joy to see. In the last few years, I have come to appreciate every time I get to see them one because I love them but also because there could be only a handful of times left that I will get to see them. It is a morbid way to look at family, but one has to come to reality that family isn’t here forever, and this fact helps me appreciate family while they are here. Covid comes into play in this story because this year the virus separated us at a time when family should be together. It deeply upset me to not be able to make another unforgettable memory with my grandparents. What really hurt me was how I could imagine they were feeling about all this. At their age family is everything and they just want to be around everyone as they are getting older. So, we tried our best to all zoom in on Christmas eve and Christmas morning to try and make it as normal as every other year. Of course, it was not the same but with the technology we have today we were still able to share some great moments through the video cameras around the room. After we had the family zoom call I could tell my grandfather really just wanted to be here with all of us and that is a hard pill to swallow on a day like Christmas. I proceeded to call him and reassure him that with time this will all go away, and we will make up for this lost time that we have all suffered through. He told me through it all through world war 2, Vietnam war and the cold war that this pandemic was the hardest to overcome in his lifetime. Which puts into perspective that this is my first true struggle to go through and has seen to be one of the worst events in recorded history. If I look at the right way, it can only get better from here and I’m ready to make up for that lost time with my close family and friends.
• 2020-03-20

  Rules are meant to be broken

  In my covid experience rules suck. At the beginning of quarentine my mom found out that the Virus was airborne. So, she did not let us go outside for a month. I had to wear a mask all Christmas Eve. I also had to socially distance Christmas morning. My family to be safe abbides by a ton of rules during quarentine.
• 0001-01-07

  Christmas in Covid

  My Christmas this year was essentially the same with some differenced, on Christmas Eve we watched Church online instead of in person, and wewent to our Grandparents house that are on my dads side and we saw our cousins and ate food. The only thing different about this is that we would have usually gone to "Farfalles" to eat dinner with our grandparents and then would have gone to our grandparents house later to open gifts. On Christmas our other grandparents came over after we had opened gifts and spent time with them and we mad this resepee that has been in the family for generation. On the Monday after Christmas we went to our Grandpa's condo in mammoth like usual.
• 2021-01-06

  My Christmas Corona Virus Story

  This year's Christmas was pretty similar to a regular year Christmas. We always spend Christmas Eve with my mom's mom, sister, and her husband and daughter so my aunt, uncle, and cousins are Sam who is 19 years old, and Sarah who is 17. Every year we switch off whos house we have Christmas Eve at this year we had it at my aunt's house. We always get all dressed up and eat prime rib for dinner then open our presents from each other but not our presents from our immediate family. We also always bring our dogs so this year we had 4 dogs on Christmas eve my dog Elli, my cousin's dog Sadie, my nanas dog Max, and Snorkel who was a dog my cousins were puppy sitting. We also always go to the Christmas Eve church service which we did not go to because the churches were closed because of the virus. We did not social distance or wear masks and we have been with each other a lot over the quarantine. Then we left at around 1:00 am and went home. Next on Christmas morning we woke up at about 9:45 and went downstairs to open presents and eat breakfast. Halfway through opening presents, we stopped for Breakfast and we always eat cinnamon rolls and bacon. Then we continue to open presents and chilled until 5:00 when my nana, cousins, aunt, and uncle came over with the dogs. My nana made her clam chowder like she does every year and we ate dinner and hanged out. They left around 10:00 and we went to bed. This year's Christmas was very similar to a normal year's Christmas.