when social distancing really sucks

Yesterday was my daughter's 20th birthday, and it sucked.

For me anyway. Let me explain.

Eve is living the dream with a flatmate, a swimming pool, and 3 cats between them. We live just two suburbs away, but we're isolating right now. Meanwhile Eve is still working, in a place where she comes into contact with potentially hundreds of people a day.

So she suggested she wouldn't come home for her birthday, a wise but difficult decision.

Then this thing happened which really rammed home how weird social distancing really is in practice (necessary I know, but that's not the point). Until now it had only seemed a tiny bit weird, because the only people I'm seeing other than those I live with, are randoms at the supermarket, and I don't care if I can't hug them, tbh.

I went to my local supermarket this afternoon, and I saw Eve there. Which was odd because it's not her local supermarket, but she needed to buy car parts (yes, essential parts) nearby so she dropped into my local shops to get other, um, essentials (I'm already sick of that word).

And when I saw her, my instinct was to hug her and kiss her, but we stopped ourselves when we remembered, just in time. And then we just stood there, my hands dangling at my sides, no idea what to do with them when I couldn't hug my daughter.

We said see ya later awkwardly like we know each other vaguely from the gym or something, I walked away, and choked back some tears (not even joking, I really did).

So yeah. Social distancing sucks, duh, no brainer. But sometimes it really sucks.

This is Eve when she was 19, in the olden days when I could see her.

Isn't she something?