An empty changing table. But in my mind, my memory, it wasn’t empty. There was a child on it, an excitable, squirmy three year old who was potty training – slowly. A shock of recognition went through me – he was that young last time we were here, wasn’t he? Had it been that long? Yes, it had.

I was standing in the bathroom of a favorite cafe – a place I hadn’t been since COVID started. We were on our way to the Zoolights event at the National Zoo – an event they hadn’t held since COVID started. And when COVID started, my kid was a toddler and now he’s a kid. Not even a “little” kid – just a kid. It was strange how time had jumped like nothing at all.

Of course, as parents, we’re familiar with this feeling. As they say, the days are long but the years are short. Time and memory plays funny tricks on parents – it seems like your kids are babies and toddlers and elementary school kids all at once. You miss things that were a slog at best when you were going through them. You want to enjoy every minute even when you’re falling apart at the seams. All strange and yet ordinary.

But this was a little different. Because it was COVID that had caused this time jump, this gap in memory.

COVID stole many things from us as a society – people, connections, the ignorance of “hybrid school” being a thing – but I wouldn’t say it stole this time together from us as a family. We still had that time together, in all of its pain and beauty and challenge. In fact, we had far more of it together than ever before.

Zoolights and cafes were replaced by driving through a local Christmas lights display and drive-through burgers in the car. Going to the movies was swapped out for homemade popcorn and the Chez Shea Movie Shack in our basement. Meeting me in the city after work to see the train display at the National Botanical Gardens was replaced with seeing it after Christmas when grandma and granddad visited.

Of those traditions, nothing was lost – not really. The experiences were different, but the people and the love were the same.

So what made me stop and gape at this changing table? It felt a little like seeing an old friend after a long time – where nothing and everything has changed. Where you want to catch up with everything and wonder what might have been if you stayed in touch but it would be better to keep moving forward instead of dwelling. As we haven’t had deaths or long-term illnesses from COVID in our family (thank goodness) that’s how COVID has been for us – like nothing and everything has changed. There’s no going backwards or changing what has happened or didn’t. And there’s no way to return to the way things had been. “Returning to normal” and just ignoring what happened simply isn’t an option. (Especially because the virus is still very much around and spreading!)

Beyond our individual family, COVID deepened the cracks of inequality and injustice in our societies, but they were very much already there. Just turning away from those fissures or pretending they aren’t our problem isn’t a solution.

Instead, we need to continue to find new and better ways for our families to move through the world, so that all families can be in the world. It doesn’t mean we have to give up everything we love – we were back at Zoolights, after all. But it’s a matter of thinking about what imprint we and our children leave on the world and if it’s one that only works for us or works for everyone.