I live by my Google Calendar. I put each birthday in with the year the person was born with an annual repeat to *try* to remember how old they are and to text them. I have my daughter’s, son’s, and my work school calendars all imported to make planning family events easier. I meticulously plan what we will be eating next week. Every doctor appointment can be verified for date of service whenever a bill comes We even have it displayed in our living room so no one can ever say I didn’t know that was happening.

Anyone else like this? It’s a problem. I am fully aware.

And each day at 5AM, I get an email with the day’s events. When this morning’s email was delivered, I quietly laughed to myself. Then I almost cried. Check it out.

As we had rounded into March 2021, a favorite blogger and friend of mine, Mostly Under Control, had a great idea to add the above note to your calendar. We were all so worried about what it would do to our kids when realistically they would likely remember very little. The idea was to ask them what they remembered when we had been removed enough from masks and vaccines and remote learning while remembering all the time we all hung out and played, took walks, and had dinner together every night. I know we weren’t all expecting to still be in the middle of this.

How can I ask them what they remember when everything is still so uncertain? When the 6 year old stuffs disposable masks and hand sanitizer in her little purse with the same enthusiasm I stuffed Lip Smackers in mine at the same age? When my in utero baby from March 2020 is now 19 months old?

So now, as we head into the THIRD year of this, I will make the above Google Calendar entry an annual event hoping that by March 13, 2023, this will be a distant memory for my kiddos. I’m praying their only memories will be the obscene amounts of puzzles we collected, game day Sundays and family movie night Fridays because I’m not sure how much longer we can hold on.