Almost 9 million Americans moved in 2020 between March and October, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), spurred on by the Pandemic. That number includes college students who moved home when the Pandemic hit in March. It also includes families who moved from cities to suburbs and older residents who thought this was a good time to get off the procrastination couch and downsize or get that retirement home in the country.

When COVID hit, and lockdowns sent us all inside without an end in sight, it felt strangely familiar to me. I’d never quarantined or lived through a pandemic, but the emotions it stirred reminded me of the year I spent locked inside my house and mind after my husband died of pancreatic cancer.

It’s human nature to postpone making major life decisions, to spend time weighing the pros and the cons, contemplating the options, looking and looking and looking before you leap. It’s my nature to go beyond this all the way to procrastinating and distracting and sometimes even putting on blinders while kicking all those difficult, gut-wrenching, point-of-no-return cans down the road. Until life intervenes.

Like fine wine we get even better with time. And nowhere is that more true than with Alysia Joy Powell, who currently is starring in Judas and the Black Messiah. Her performance has been noted as one of the most important appearances in the film.

When the pandemic hit, the last thing I thought of was getting a second dog. I was more concerned with washing my hands and figuring out how I would teach in the fall. But shitty things kept happening. My father-in-law died of Covid, my daughter was dumped by her long-time boyfriend, I worried about teaching in-person, and about my father and step-father’s health.