Ever since the pandemic started, many individuals, families, and communities have been impacted by a massive change. Now we are doing work from home and children are being taught online-learning since it’s not safe yet to go back and do in-person learning. Many individuals have lost jobs thanks to COVID-19 since many places had to shut down and around 50 million individuals had to file for unemployment. However not everything is bad, many saw the pandemic as a way to spend more family time, start new hobbies and small new businesses started rising as well. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected my family and me in both positive and negative ways. Before the pandemic, I was a senior in high school ready for the last months to be full of fun and endless memories since our gradnite was coming up, our last assembly, and our graduation. My father and older stepbrother were working full time while my younger stepbrother and I were working part-time jobs to help around the house for food and supplies we needed. Once the pandemic struck, my father and my older stepbrother were unemployed for around 2 months while my other stepbrother I and were permanently unemployed until this COVID-19 is over.
The most difficult part of this experience is not being able to see the rest of our family members like I am so close with my grandparents but due to the pandemic, I rather stay away than to risk them of getting COVID-19. Another difficult part of this experience is not being able to go to school and do in-person learning this online-learning method I do not like especially for little kids because it doesn’t help them improve their communication skills with children their age. Something that inspired me and also gave me hope was when certain restaurants and local public places started opening but with new guidelines to keep the people safe and at a safe distance. However, after local places started opening the COVID-19 cases started spiking higher than ever and that’s when I got nervous and started losing hope again because they had to close again. Ever since the pandemic, many birthdays and graduations have passed and we weren’t able to celebrate how we traditionally celebrate without family members and our huge parties. For my graduation, family members passed with their cars and honked and left the presents on a table which we placed for them to be able to drop them off and to reduce contact with them. For my cousin’s birthday, we did the same, and also for my gramma’s we sang to her happy birthday
from outside her house while she looked at us through the window. Quarantine affected this beautiful experience because we couldn’t be there to cook for her or taker her out to eat and take pictures as a family. I haven’t witnessed an act of kindness in my neighborhood since many are scared to not have a safe distance from the person they are talking to. For example, a couple of days ago I saw a lady drop some money and I followed her near her car however I had a safe distance from her and when she saw me she was so scared. She told me to stay where I was and to leave the money on the floor and to go a couple of steps back then she took out some gloves
from her car and some hand sanitizer for the money. She soaked the money in hand sanitizer and picked it up with the glove and said “Thank you!” and got on top of her car.
Every time my family and I head out to go shopping or anything and we see the firefighters or an ambulance I start cheering and honking and one time a firefighter yelled back to us “Thank you!” It’s been so many months in quarantine and I honestly fear that it might take until next year for this whole COVID-19 to not be so threatful anymore. I don’t think that life will be the same after we emerge out of quarantine because a successful vaccine must be created and must be a requirement. Also, it’s going to take a couple of months for us to rebuild our economy and probably around 1 year for everything to go back to how everything was without having to wear a mask when we want to go eat at a restaurant or for us to have a normal family party without loved ones. Some of the changes I will make to be going forward is going to get the vaccine once it’s out which I am pretty sure it’s going to be mandatory especially for going back to school. Also, I will learn to treasure more of my family members and to not procrastinate
when it comes to visiting and attending family reunions.
Submitted by Monica, San Diego County — San Diego.