`LITTLE THINGS' FROM 2020 WILL BE A BIG DEAL IN 2021
This wretched year will soon be in the rear-view mirror. Here's to 2020 hindsight!
That said, we shouldn't necessarily wish for most of 2020 to be expunged from the memory banks.
If nothing else, it will give us a point of comparison when things turn around.
And they will turn around — in 2021.
Assuredly, we bottomed out during the 387 months that seemed to comprise an interminable 2020.
Beginning in March, our routines were disrupted due to COVID-19 and the consequent restrictions.
How many times did we hear “social distancing?”
For variety, there was “physical distancing.”
Suddenly, something as routine and reflexive as a handshake or a hug was inadvisable.
There was a reason to look at others with wariness. (How dare you infringe upon a six-foot radius? Get back! Back!)
Disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer became prized items.
Masks were suddenly an essential part of the wardrobe, thereby complicating the professional lives of our dedicated Regina Police Service officers.
For example, how do you single out a bank robber if everyone is wearing a mask?
“Actually, it is kind of a thing,” RPS Chief Evan Bray noted. “Descriptions are much more focused on clothing since COVID.”
Green and white garb isn't as conspicuous. A CFL season that was supposed to culminate in a Regina-based Grey Cup was ashcanned due to the pandemic.
No Saskatchewan Roughriders football, unimaginably. A delayed Chapter 2 in the Cody Fajardo story. A $278-million stadium that became a 33,000-seat Christmas ornament.
An extended sporting intermission doesn't even rank as a minor inconvenience compared to the tragedies that families have endured — the sadness often being exacerbated by an enforced distance between loved ones at critical times.
We have learned some difficult, painful lessons about perspective. At the same time, we have realized how strong, how resilient, we can be.
Recent experiences, as excruciating as they may have been in so many cases, will serve us well in the months ahead as we become reacquainted with the life we once knew — and perhaps took for granted.
It won't happen overnight but, one by one, the switches will be flipped.
As more people are vaccinated, the COVID numbers should decrease. Restrictions will be gradually lifted — for good — as will the figurative fog that has enveloped our province, our nation and the world since February.
We will come to appreciate the so-called little things.
Even something as seemingly basic as being able to walk around Wascana Lake in either direction will be something to enjoy.
How liberating will it be to go shopping, or to go anywhere, and not have to follow arrows on the floor?
Lunch with a friend? Where do we meet?
Imagine Christmas … just like the ones we used to know.
We have just experienced what will almost certainly be a oncein-a-lifetime Dec. 25.
Counterintuitively, we avoided some of our favourite people — at least if we adhered to public-health orders — by not spending any of the holiday season in the residences of relatives or dear friends.
Instead, responsible citizens have stayed home and, hopefully, made the most of that time.
“Christmas is about family,” former Roughriders receiver Jeff Fairholm said the other day. “I know it sounds like a cliché, but take the word `cliché' away for this year, because of everything that is going on. It really is about family.”
And what the authorities have been telling us is this: Spend more time with the people in your immediate family! In the comfort of your own home!
Is that really such an imposition? It could be viewed as a gift.
Granted, we have had to forego certain things and put some Yuletide traditions on hold, but that will only serve to make Christmas 2021 feel even better.
This is not to suggest that the year ahead will be a joyride. Recent COVID data demonstrates that the battle is far from won.
But there is promise. There is hope. Science is an ally. Vaccines are arriving. There is an end game, at long last.
Such is the foundation for optimism as we prepare to flip the calendar and, at long last, consign 2020 to the past.