I took my daughter to brunch today. We were both in a snow situation, having been scheduled to attend a DECA competition that was cancelled because really, it was very cold.

On the way back, the conversation turned to the pandemic, how it drags on and on and on and on and on. She told me she had to stop reading THE HILL WE CLIMB because she just couldn’t with that timeframe anymore. And that the year 536 has been declared the worst year ever to be alive. A volcano exploded and blocked out the sun. That killed all the crops. So people starved.

And there was a plague.

Even now I’m finding myself reading books about wars and the flu of 1918, because for some reason reminding myself that things have always been shitty and the only thing special about COVID-19 is that we weren’t expecting it. Plagues are actually pretty normal. It’s not, like, personal.

She wasn’t having it. “I can’t read about it,” she said. “I am so over it. I have almost a cringey response to any of it now. That happened when I was 15. I’m about to turn 18. I just want to get on with my life.”

And she should. She’s about to enter the most world-rocking period of her young life: off to college, trying on new identities, meeting all kinds of people her age thrown into the same situation. It’s thrilling and exciting — the exact opposite of the spirit-crushing black hole of terrified boredom we lived in for so long.

I push on that time sometimes, still. Just checking. But the grief, like all grief, is fading with every passing month. And thank God she wants to get on with her life. Thank God.

ONWARD.