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

My son went back to school yesterday and well, I feel really sad. I've written a lot about what a gift it was to have him home for six months when he took time off from school, and now he's gone back for the spring semester. I'm happy he's happy, but the house feels very empty and I feel really sad I won't see him until maybe June! He's only 300 miles away but his college has a strict no-visitor policy--the students aren't even allowed to leave campus. It's also his birthday next week so I've conspired with his girlfriend, who goes to school with, and will be arriving on his birthday, to pick up some sweets for him. Anyway, it's just sad. Sometimes I think I spend too much time being angry so I don't have to feel sad. Yesterday, with my son and daughter, we drove to NYC and back in one day from Washington DC. It felt very surreal. We buzzed into the city, and got some NY pizza and bagels, dropped him with his ride to go the rest of the way to his college, and then she and I headed back out to the NJ turnpike. There were TONS of people everywhere in NYC walking around--maybe because they'd been inside with the snow--??--but you'd never know there was a pandemic (although most people were masked). Anyway, it was nice to have time with my kids (even if just in a minivan on the highway) but it was sad to go to NYC too, because we were in the neighborhood where my dad and stepmom lived for 30 years--my father died about 6 years ago and then my stepmother last year, so it was weird being in their neighborhood without them. We all felt sad that they were gone, and that our family can't gather the way we use to, and how strange it was that they never knew about the pandemic. My father, a lawyer, never even had to experience the Trump years, which probably was just as well because Trump would have made him insane. But driving through their neighborhood made me really sad, saying good bye to my son, talking with my daughter who has become completely cynical this year...just a big day of sadness. meanwhile, we are in a strange place where my husband and daughter have both gotten the vaccine (they are eligible--nurse and teacher) and it will be months before I do. I don't care, I don't want to cut the line--I'm healthy, I work at home, etc...but I worry that they will get lax, so I have to keep reminding them that I have zero protection. I hope we can make it through the next few months until the rest of the vaccines become available. I am, of course, completely worried about these new variants. I don't trust the US public to be safe--and here we are, on the verge of beating this thing back with the vaccinations and the lower case counts. But what's going to happen? People are going to have Superbowl parties and stop wearing masks and then we're going to get swamped by these more contagious variants and we'll get set back months and months. I just wish Biden or Fauci or someone would go on TV and broadcast this every night: Stay home. Stay safe. Wear a mask. Just wait it out. We are almost there. Don't fuck it up, America!