Dear Editor
Thank you for your continued commitment to delivering our local news. As much as your article, “Our ugly pandemic year of 2020 – A year for the trash can,” shared some tough reminders about what our community went through this year, I think that it’s important to look at the other side of our story.
I will be one of the first to say that, if given a choice at the beginning of 2020, I would have opted for a “normal” year. I would rather not have seen my daughter, on her birthday (March 16), trudging through the snowy school grounds of Battleford Central School with a garbage bag full of her school supplies to begin a long 3.5 months of learning from home. I would have loved to cheer our NBCHS Vikings female basketball team to another (possible) gold medal at Hoopla. I would have loved to continue my job as an exercise therapist, leading dozens of great seniors in exercise programming each week. I would have loved to host family after family in my home for meals.
But 2020 didn’t go like that. 2020 was tough, but I’m choosing to be grateful that it went the way it did:
We were able to stop hustling around to the many (over)-commitments that we’ve been a part of for too many years
Those of us in the health care field or many other industries are working in many new ways. It’s hard, but we have amazing people working around us who aren’t willing to give up. We’ve learned a lot and have made friendships that will last well beyond this year.
We’ve been forced to get outside in order to be with our loved ones. My children and I have especially appreciated the many memories made with my mom (their Nana), as we have canoed, hiked, skied, and biked in order to visit with each other. And I was brought to tears seeing my dad lace up his skates after being sidelined for six or so years with a bad hip. He smiled like a kid while he circled his grandchildren on the outdoor rink at my sister’s farm. We never would have done any of this in a “normal year.”
While many of us are “zoom-fatigued,” we have connected in different, sometimes deeper ways as we get a glimpse of each other’s homes and families. We can all laugh at the meetings we’ve been in where our children yell “I’m HUNGRY!”, or better yet, “MOM! CAN YOU WIPE MY BUM?”
The resilience of our teachers and school staff has been amazing. Pajama-party zoom calls, awards day videos, walk-through graduations, teaching kids how to tolerate masks for a whole day, you name it, they’ve done it. And to all the daycares and early childhood staff out there: you are true superheroes. You have kept serving our young families without skipping a beat. I am beyond grateful.
2020 was one for the record books, for bad and for good. But I would never, ever, want to erase the memories of this year from the deep and sacred places in my heart.
Maybe the circumstances of 2020 were dumptster-like. But I’d like to say that I’d rather be in a dumpster with the many amazing people of the Battlefords than anywhere else in the world.
Cheers guys. We’ll get through this.
Wendy Verity
Battleford
