Suddenly they were both home with no place to go, no friends to see, and no jobs. While we went to work each day it still left the four of us with a lot of time together, something not too many parents with teens usually get. While the girls both continued their school through distance learning on-line, there was plenty of downtime for them and us especially in the evenings and on weekends. Family dinner together has always been part of our routine, except now the girls were prepping the meals and doing the cleanup instead of mom.

Our daily routines were pretty mundane during the week but thankfully we have home gym equipment so we were all able to get in some exercise and de-stress to keep from going stir crazy. For the girls, both of whom are very active athletes, the loss of sports, practices, and their routine was a difficult adjustment. Fortunately the one thing we could all do together was to take walks, and on the weekends - very long walks. It was the one thing we could do outdoors where we could be together yet stay away from others which you can say is one benefit to living in the suburbs. The walks began first in our immediate neighborhood, and as weeks began to pass, we felt that if we kept a distance from others we could then find other locations to walk. We graduated beyond the paths near our home, to Cape Cod along the canal, then to a bike trail that meanders through several Cape towns and villages, and then to our neighboring golf course, which was closed during the pandemic.

On some days we would walk more than 10-miles and on one cool breezy Saturday we managed to cover 14-miles. While much of the time was spent thinking and taking in our surroundings, the solitude gave us plenty of time to talk and dream about the future. Oftentimes we would recap our week and talk about the days when we could make plans again, especially plans to return to Cortona, while the girls would fool around, explore, pick up rocks, and always seek out a passerby with a dog, socially distanced of course. In many ways the simplicity and freedom of these walks was reminiscent of when they were very young and just fascinated by the world around them. For much of our time during the pandemic these weekend journeys were the highlight and something we looked forward to as we passed the days.

Although this may sound boring and not that unusual what made these different was the time together. Most parents like us on the path to being empty nesters get a few minutes a day with their soon to be adult children, and if they are lucky they may convince them to do some family things once in a while. Instead during the lock-down we were all forced to be together in a way that may never happen again once the girls grow older, graduate from school, get jobs, and fully enter into adulthood. While this may be one of the most challenging periods for the world during our lifetimes (we were not around for WWII or the Spanish Flu) the silver lining has been our time together. As life as we knew it before the virus slowly comes back, we are already beginning to see the signs that this time together is slowly passing.  Our work lives are gradually returning to normal; the girls are finished with school and distance learning; they are now working in the summer jobs; they are visiting with friends and going to the beach; and, the opportunities for long walks are becoming fewer. While there is no doubt relief and thankfulness that the worst of the pandemic appears to be over, we also realize what a precious gift this family time was for us. Time together, no distractions, no competition for their attention. Just us.  Making all our own fun, cooking all our own food and just being.  Years from now we will look back on this time, when life was suspended, and savor the moments we had when the world around us stopped and we came together as a family, as a community, as a country, and as a global citizen like never before, and perhaps never again.