by Brenna Henderson ’21

COVID-19 affected me long before schools were closed. My dad is a public health officer and was deployed to Atlanta for two weeks to care for patients with COVID-19. After he got back, he had to be quarantined for another two weeks and lived in our basement. Those four weeks were the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing one of my parents, and it was the longest my mom had gone without seeing my dad since his training with the navy. 

My dad being in the house but never around was even weirder. For meals, my mom would set a tray of food on the stairs, and my dad would come up and get it as soon as she was gone. For family dinners, we would facetime him even though we could hear him from the basement. To spend time with him, I would sit at the top of the staircase leading to the basement while he would sit at the bottom. It was an odd situation, but it wasn’t the only impact of COVID-19 on my life. 

A positive impact, for me at least, was my sister coming home. My sister, Olivia, attends Tulane University in New Orleans and had to come home for the rest of her school year. Her graduation, band season, and all other events were canceled, and she was devastated. A silver lining, however, is that I get to spend more time with her before she moves away to attend grad school. Keeping busy is easy with her around because we’ll spend lots of time together watching shows, playing on our Nintendo Switches together, or just sitting with each other while we do work.