by Jürgen Griswold, 06/30/2020, Central Lake, MI

Middle School 6-8 Category

On March 13, 2020 the president declared it a national emergency. The coronavirus has spread throughout the United States and most of the world. They confine everyone to their homes, except the front-line workers that are out there risking their lives to save others.

Life in isolation has been a roller coaster of emotions. One moment you’re having a great time playing a board game with your family, then the next moment you check up on the death count in your area and see that it has gone up two. For me, seeing all the pain and suffering that is happening to our country has been hard. My parents are both older and have more of a risk of getting the virus but they still need to go out and get needed material, and that is always a constant worry in my mind.

Being secluded from extended family and friends has been hard, we build our family upon those relationships and not being able to be with them in this hard time is painful. Even though this is all going through my mind it has not been all that bad. The best thing that has happened from this is that I have more time to spend with my family. With my brother about to go off to pre-colleges and myself going to other camps this summer we would have been away from our parents (and they would have loved that) but now I have time with them I could have never had before. Some days it is hard, either struggling to handle online schooling or just getting on each other’s nerves, but it is amazing to spend quality time with them, even if we are in isolation.

When we are all getting along, the key thing has been bingeing “Cheers,” a sitcom from the 1990s sitcom. My mom introduced it to us about a month ago and now we are halfway through the eleven seasons. One upside to this pandemic is that most people can sit back, relax and reevaluate on things that they wouldn’t have before. I believe that the world needs this time so we can come together and really appreciate one another.