Alison Curtis: Looking carefully ahead and hoping for the best in 2021

Pic: Marc O'Sullivan

It is safe to say everyone is looking forward to saying goodbye to 2020. It was a year like no other, it tested us all in ways we would never have predicted and it was the year when everything changed.

It is so odd to think back to this time last year and the excitement of welcoming the year 2020. Never could we have imaged this time last year that schools would be shut for months. We wouldn’t be in restaurants or pubs anymore. We wouldn’t be at gigs, at work or gathering in groups with our friends.

How could we have ever predicted that we wouldn’t be able to leave the house without masks or sanitiser? That we would be baking so much, restricted to 2k from our homes and separated from family? I had certainly never heard of Zoom before March and never dreamt I would be homeschooling.

So as the year closes many of us are probably looking back and trying to take some positives from the past twelve months as well as looking carefully and optimistically towards the next year.

I have mentioned before in this column that I did really enjoy being at home with my daughter, Joan, when the schools first closed. I found homeschooling manageable only because unlike thousands of parents across the country I was thankfully able to make my work fit in around Joan’s needs.

We took so many little day trips together and even when our radius was so small we discovered places within our area we didn’t even know existed. I took some relief in not having the hustle of the school runs each day and getting her to swimming, piano, basketball etc. 

Life slowed down considerably and I really feel both of us benefited mentally as well as physically from that shift.

Another positive that came out of 2020 is Joan as a single child had to develop skills to entertain herself at points across the year and to learn to be happy with her own company. This didn’t come easily at first but I feel she really grew in this area of her life since March.

But the biggest silver lining of this past year is my twin sister was able to come from Canada and live with us for the last two months. She was able to work online and the impact of having her here on both Joan and I has been immense. It has been so wonderful and something that would not have come about if she had still been working in an office.

So 2021. Normally this time of year we are full of resolutions and hopes for a new year. I think this is true for many of us again this year but it is definitely peppered with a nervous anxiety around what the next year will realistically look like. Will it be massively different from this year? Will schools stay open? Will the vaccine have a huge impact on the spread of the virus?

Unfortunately, we are still living in stressful and unsettling times and under government restrictions.

But at the same time it is only human nature to want to look ahead and hope for the best. To believe that the arrival of a vaccine will ultimately lead to a return of life that was much more familiar to us pre-Covid. That we can count on schools staying open for our children’s wellbeing and our own. That we will once again return to work places, pubs and in the near future be standing in a field watching our favourite band with hundreds of others.

We can only hope like we do every New Year that the coming year will be good. All we can do is take positives from the past year and carry them through to the new year. To keep looking after ourselves and one another. To keep our kids happy and healthy and to hope for the best.

Happy New Year everyone!