Normal again

By Leigh, Age 13

Over the pandemic we struggled with online school and losing family and friends. But at the end of the
year we still graduated, I made one of my best friends that year. Even though we had to give up a lot of
things, we gained things too. Over the pandemic, I started to research the Spanish flu. It was a pandemic
worse than the plague. It ended in 1920, only two years after it began. and somehow it got to such a
point of normal again, that no one even thought that a pandemic this year was possible. But if they did it,
then we can too. It’s been two years since then, and the mask mandates might be lifted. I am going to
school, hanging out with my friends, going to the store, and two years ago, that would have seemed
crazy. But I know we can do it because we have before. We can again. And now this year I can think about how I got to stare at the stars with my friends, see my family, worry about homework instead of covid, and it feels like if that’s what normal is, then we are already there.