I did not write last week.

I thought it would pass.

I thought just about the time everybody geared it down, it would surge back to the way it was. I figured all I had to do was lay low for a few days and when I resurfaced, it would be gone.

But I was wrong. That is not what has happened.

If I were to judge it by my own small personal world, I could make-believe nothing has changed. I write from home, and otherwise I am a homeschool mom. A housewife by trade. When I want to play it up I say I am a homemaker. It is what I wanted to be. I was well on my way to being a half-ass professional when I made that realization.

Not too many girls who graduated from high school between 1980 and 1990 – hardly nobody whose mama had graduated between 1950 and 1970 – was at liberty to say that after all the sacrifice and bra burning that they wanted to become a housewife. But for whatever reason it became my ambition. It suits my nature.

And I am not alone. I have a circle of friends – other homeschool mothers – who share a slower-paced, stay-at-home lifestyle. Across the country, there are many.

But it was by choice. It was planned and well thought out. And I must say…it is an odd feeling knowing so many people are experiencing our lifestyle – only not by choice.

When I first went home…it took me weeks to adjust to stillness. To stop living by a clock. To choose what I wanted to do rather than doing what I had to do.

I wonder if everybody is going through that, that feeling like you’ve stepped off a hamster wheel. I have described it as feeling like it was the first time in a long time that I had looked at myself straight. I finally had to stop…and face myself.

Before long you should relax some, if you haven’t already. And you will likely find yourself sifting through mental snapshots of everything that had become so intimately familiar to you.

You will know by what you miss what is important to you.

It will also become clear to you what you may want to permanently omit.

Who knows, maybe after trying it on for size there will be a surge in housewives and homeschool moms. Some people may find the calm just what they had been searching for.

I keep hearing people say they have never seen anything like this before.

I did not know it was possible to press pause on our society.

I did not realize how much it meant to me just knowing everybody was living their own private day to day lives in our public world. The streets in town are empty. The schools are empty, just like the sidewalks. No retirees are out on morning strolls, nobody is jogging, nobody is out pushing babies in strollers. What few people who are out, are focused, doing only what is necessary and hurrying back home.

I did not know how much this meant to me. I did not see before how we are all invisibly connected. I didn’t realize how much we touch and interact or how much that mattered to my own happiness. I don’t think I knew how much we all should value one another.

We will tell time by Covid-19. There was before, and there will be after. Soon the world will start spinning again…and this time, I am not going to take any of you for granted.

Amanda Walker is a contributor with AL.com The Selma Times Journal, Thomasville Times, West Alabama Watchman, and Alabama Gazette. Contact her at Walkerworld77@msn.com or at https://www.facebook.com/AmandaWalker.Columnist.