It was about two years ago that we went into lockdown mode due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In San Francisco, where I have been living since August 2019, lockdown started on the afternoon of March 16th, 2020, and continued until mid May. In the past two years, so many of us have suffered due to fear, losses, illness, political and social unrest, discrimination and violence … The pandemic has been a time unlike any most of us have endured. Although I have not personally lost anyone close to me from COVID, I did lose my mother to cancer in September 2020, and the last few months of her illness were complicated by all the COVID restrictions–she was in the hospital for a month with no visitors allowed, and I had to cancel a trip I had planned in April 2020, which would have been the last time I could have seen her before her health really declined.

It’s easy sometimes to forget just how scary and strange things were two years ago. Somehow, last year’s one-year anniversary of the lockdown didn’t have as big an impact on me. Maybe it was because a year ago, people were starting to feel optimistic about things “getting more back to normal” with vaccines becoming more widely available to the general public. I know I was feeling much more hopeful last spring, when I was able to get fully vaccinated. For me, having kept my social contact pretty limited from March 2020 to spring 2021, vaccination meant feeling comfortable being around larger groups of people, feeling tentatively ready to eat in restaurants (although I mainly chose outdoor dining or takeout even then), and finally believing that the pandemic could get under control.

With the Delta and Omicron variants surging in late 2021 and early 2022, I felt discouraged and worried for my health and the health of those close to me who are more vulnerable; so, I went back to being more cautious. It’s been hard to go backwards. I’m starting to feel more optimistic again now. But, it’s been a long two years.

As I was thinking about this anniversary coming up and all the fear and turmoil I felt in 2020, I thought it would be nice to look through my photos and find some happy memories from mid March in various years “in the before time.” Yes, things were not always great before COVID in many ways–the political unrest, racism, and so many other issues were a part of our world. But I do like to think about some of the ways pre-pandemic life felt different and better. So, here are a few of my pre-COVID March memories.