What's My Age Again?

By now, many of us have fully resumed our post-pandemic lives. But what about all the years we missed?

- Katy Schneider

A ROUND THE one-year mark of the pandemic, my mother and sister and I began litigating who was missing out on more, from an important life-experience perspective. My sister was 24 when the whole thing started, so I nominated her. She didn't yet have a proper friend group set up in her city, and she hadn't had a chance to establish herself at work-neither of which seemed likely to happen from the living room. My mom was missing 57, which didn't seem horrible, but, as she said, every year counts.

We agreed I probably was faring the best. I was 27. I'd lived with my boyfriend for more than a year in an apartment beneath a close friend's. We didn't have children. In fact, I'd often sit on Zoom from my kitchen and watch my parent-colleagues less and less gently herd their toddlers offscreen and think, God, if there ever was the right time in my life for a global pandemic to strike, this would be it.

Three years and more than half a dozen variants later, I began to reconsider. Reemerged, I found strangers and friends alike were exceedingly curious about various new topics like, Did I happen to know a wedding venue in Brooklyn suitable for 150? And did I think I'd ever consider moving outside the city? Seven times in a two-month period, I was asked if I'd be freezing my eggs. All of which seemed strange, because-well, I hadn't yet realized I'd turned 30.

That COVID warped our perception of time is well established studies show that stressful experiences tend to make it feel unclear how much time is passing, especially when one is confined to one's home for months on end. It felt fast, it felt slow, it's now hard to remember at all. With some time and space from that urgent, panicked period (did that happen yesterday or the day before? How long has it been since I've seen another person?), some new questions have started to come up. Like, if we slept through three years of normal life development, how old are we exactly?