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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

My birthday was this past week. While COVID obviously changed some things (I didn't go out with friends), birthdays have always been a super family-centered thing in my family. I don't live with my family anymore, but I traveled home to spend the day with them (and stayed to vote with them).My mom's parents were never big on birthdays when she was little. They forgot a lot of them. So she promised herself that when she had kids, she'd make it the best day of the year for them. And she succeeded. I looked forward to my birthday more than any holiday. She would wake us up with cake and singing and then we'd get to eat cake for breakfast and open presents right there first thing in the morning. And for the rest of the day it was all about you. She'd decorate the whole kitchen as a theme, a couple of times it was spongebob, or movies, or underwater, or disco. It was awesome. Now a days since my brother and I are older, it's just "birthday", but she still goes all out. Covers the windows in banners and hangs streamers and tapes decorations to the ceilings, confetti everywhere. It's really sweet. So in the past week, I feel super grateful not just for her and her continuous effort, but also for being able to spend my birthday with my family. And then to vote as a family. We waited in line for almost 2 hours (we've never waited before) but it was so worth it.