What Were You Doing on March 13?

For me, March 13 - Friday the 13th - was the beginning of Groundhog Day. From that day everyone’s lives changed. So I went back through my camera roll to see what happened on March 13 in the years past. There were two years that we went to central Virginia to visit the family. We went one time with a friend and another year with my sister, staying at the Craddock Terry Hotel. Our son’s new home was being completely renovated along the James River and it was a great way to see the updates and take a four hour road trip. For whatever reason another year I had looked up our Borzoi’s pedigree and found her listed with all of her kin. She was the sweetest dog you could ever want. Our anniversary is around March 13, so seeing Niagara Falls forty years ago was a vivid reminder how time flies and stands still at the same time. Another year I was at the urgent care clinic for a sore knee and that same day our house got flooded from a broken pipe. The wet shoes are the only evidence that it happened. That was such a disaster and another reason we decided it was time to move away from our Capitol Hill condo. Then there are the magnolia blossoms in front of the Smithsonian castle and another year in front of our new home in northern Virginia. It would have been interesting to look back at all the March 13ths since I was born. But my camera roll only goes back about six years. Even though my husband and I both got our vaccines we are still in the stay at home mode. The wildest thing we have done is to take off our mask while driving in the car. In many ways we lost a year - I feel like I’ve aged at least ten years. It will take a while to feel “normal” again.