I can see from the writings of various bloggers that the pandemic did, despite its horrific death toll, do a few good things: families getting to know each other again (maybe too much?), learning to relax and enjoy quiet time (if you don’t have five children), reconnecting with nature, learning to bake/cook or just doing more of it, finding out what your children are really learning at school (and having to relearn it to teach them).
I’ve been baking
Hubs and I are retired with my daughter and her husband living nearby, but my son is in Utah. We haven’t seen him in nearly two years now. Bummer. We were blessed with our first grandchild, Eli, just before the state shut down, and he kept us happy for the past year.
What the pandemic did for us is force us allow us to clean out our home of 35 years to get it ready for sale, which we had planned for 2020. My husband was at our local landfill so much they offered him a job. I think there is a whole section with our name on it. Mind you, we would have donated much of it, but nothing was open to which we could donate. While we were doing this, workmen were in and out of the house doing a million reasonable number of repairs: they repainted inside of the house in a nauseating attractive neutral beige, replaced the HVAC system, and dug holes in our lawn to check the septic system. 
We had thirty-two open houses until we arrived at an awfully low attractive price which generated an offer. Then my daughter and family moved in with us for a month. We packed during the day, they packed during the night when their working from home jobs were done for the day. And we got to babysit Eli.
Somehow, through all this, and taking reasonable precautions (masks and gloves for all visitors), no one got sick.
In the middle of all this, I edited and published my book The Last Pilgrim to the sound of silence great applause. Where in heck can you market when everything is closed? Luckily some of my blogger friends took up the cause!
Garfield, who had resisted all attempts to be put into a carrier for three years, amazingly went right in on the day of our move-out. And off to the vets for a week. He kept me awake all night when we picked him up, nuzzling and kneading and chirping his happiness to be home, even if it was a new home. 