My kids’ school hosts a roller skating program in gym class for grades 1-5 for three weeks every spring. It’s a much-anticipated annual activity.

Except it hasn’t been an annual activity recently, or at least not for us. School shut down due to covid-19 in early March 2020 when my oldest was in first grade. No roller skating for anyone that year. And in spring of 2021 we were still running our at-home learning pod. No roller skating that year either.

So here he is in fourth grade, only one year left in elementary school. This is only his second year doing the roller skating program, but it should be his fourth. We’ve only been to two proper fall festivals instead of the five we should have attended. All these annual events are still new to us.

These things, I know, are not a big deal. Kids move to new schools all the time or experience much more tragic circumstances that keep them from participating in the spring roller skating program. Our extended pandemic lockdown and learning pod certainly had some benefits.

But now that the pandemic is over I keep forgetting it even happened. My kids go to school now, every day, like some sort of miracle. Current ICU patient numbers are no longer taking up space in my brain. We are flying in airplanes again and planning vacations as if they will actually happen (and they sometimes do!).

But.

The roller skating program wasn’t ever a certainty in 2020, and it’s not a certainty for 2024 either. Fifth grade is not a certainty. School is not a certainty.

I’m so glad he’s enjoying roller skating this year.