Five YEARS?
Wow.
Thinking back to February 2020, I remember taking trips to Orlando, LA and Chicago. And I thought nothing of it. I flew ALL the time -- at least once a month, usually more. But in hindsight, you could feel the winds of change...
On my way home from Orlando after visiting my parents for a few days, I snuggled into my window seat on a JetBlue flight to Newark that was typically packed with people, pets and personal belongings that did not fit in the overhead bin.
This time, I had the whole row to myself.
How nice, I thought.
Next, in LA, at a women's business conference that I was working on, all of the conversatons drifted towards health. At the hotel, every morning and evening, we met up in the lobby. It was fairly empty, except for gaggles of international flight attendants rushing by.
All wearing masks.
How odd, I thought.
A week later in Chicago, my brother and I took the kids out for my nephew's 9th birthday. We went to a movie theater to see Sonic the Hedgehog, and talked in hushed tones at a nearby restaurant about this mystery virus that was hitting the news, while my nephew and niece colored.
The restaurant was half-empty. So was the movie theater.
How much should I worry, I thought.
By mid-March, things escalated. Quickly.
Back in the office, Covid talk was EVERYWHERE so we came up with a plan for the team to work from home in shifts as a test run, on the off chance it became unsafe to be at work.
On Tuesday, March 10, 2020 around 8pm, I left my office in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, on 5th Ave directly across from the New York Public Library. I wore a black puffy jacket but you could feel Spring was just around the corner. I walked 5 blocks to my parking garage, got in my car, flipped on some tunes, and drove the 4 miles across the city, through the Lincon Tunnel and up to my apartment in Hoboken, NJ, on the scenic banks of the Hudson River.
Little did I know...
That was the last time I would be in NYC. I havent been back since.
To this day, I SO wish I just stopped -- stood on the sidewalk and took it all in. The sights, the sounds, even the smells.
I wish I said goodbye -- and thank you -- to a city that I love.
Anyway, while I was making my way home to NJ, on the other side of the country, my boss was boarding a flight from LA to back to NY. She was mid-air around 9pm when we got an email from our LA office saying someone in the NY office -- MY office -- caught the Coronavirus.
Uh oh.
Our leadership team (minus my boss) quickly jumped on Slack and we decided to email everyone in our company and tell them to stay home tomorrow. It was late, but most people were up anyway. In that moment, I remember feeling a mix of fear and relief, kind of like when school was canceled as a kid because of some big snowstorm coming on the same day as an important test.
I decided to exhale and make the best of it... until later that night when my phone started buzzing.
It was after midnight, so technically now March 11th. And it went a little something like this...
What happened next? Well, she called, and let's just say she wasn't happy that we let the company work from home.
To be fair, she had no way to know we were on the precipice of a once in a lifetime worldwide health pandemic. And the funny thing is, to this day, I think March 10, 2020 was the last time the whole company was in the office together as this kicked off many years of remote, then hybrid work schedules.
But still...
We were right to take it seriously and let everyone stay home.
Later that same day, March 11th, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The US government declared a national emergency on March 13th as all businesses and schools were ordered closed in the days and weeks that followed.
And so it began...
2 weeks to "flatten the curve," which became 2 months, 2 years, and the rest is history.
At first it was an adventure, then it wasn't. I'm not really sure what a zombie apocalypse would be like, but maybe something like this.
The aftershocks have faded slowly with time -- the fear, sorrow and resilience. A new normal. It changed us all. I wonder how history will look back on it.
I'm not sure I recognize the NYC I see today, but I do miss the NYC I knew.
Goodnight, Manhattan -- 5 years gone, but forever in my heart. xo
