How the Pandemic Upended Our Lives

This month marks five years since “cancel everything” became an American rallying cry. We retreated into our homes for a period of solitude brought on by a global pandemic that many of us thought would last a few weeks but instead redefined how and where we live our lives.

Look around your home, and it’s not hard to spot vestiges. Maybe you’ve still got a Peloton or a fire pit or a random bottle of hand sanitizer in your purse. Maybe you moved to Idaho.

Here is a sampling of the random stuff I collected during the pandemic that is still lying around my house.

A basket of N95s

A stack of board games

Four raised flower beds

A hammock

My dog

A few days ago, I spotted a tattered, faded sticker on the floor of a Vietnamese restaurant reminding me to “stand six feet apart.”

There are more profound changes, too. The phrase “hybrid work” barely registered in January 2020. Now it is deeply ingrained in the fabric of office culture, despite pushback from some employers and, more recently, Elon Musk.

Sometimes seismic cultural changes with a sudden fury. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic, Tom Hanks, America’s Dad, announced that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, had the disease and the stock market was tanking. Overnight, home became everything. Balconies and windows transformed into kitchenware drum circles to cheer the health care workers. The streets were shockingly silent, lest for the endless, heartbreaking sirens.