Sarah Smalls is tiptoeing back into her old routine now that she’s fully vaccinated against Covid-19. She hosted the Easter dinner. Her adult son is now stopping for indoor visits. She and her husband plan to travel again.
But like many newly vaccinated Americans, Mrs. Smalls, who is 74 years old and lives in Lorton, Virginia, isn’t just trying to thaw and start her pre-pandemic life over.
Ms. Smalls says the person who went into the pandemic is not the same who got out. She emerges with new goals, priorities, and concerns. The long pause forcing isolation as well as introspection has been a catalyst to change course.
Mrs. Smalls finally plans to learn to swim. She wants to go on weekend trips with her best friends. Most notably, she won’t go back to the frantic pace she maintained for years when she was raising three grandchildren and working at a nonprofit. During the pandemic, she left her job as a staff to provide advice for the group, a change she says she did not expect in the coming years.
“As the kids say, ‘I’m going to do it with me,’” says Ms. Smalls. “It took a pandemic to show me that you don’t have much time to do what you want to do. It gave me that push, and it was a hard push. “