It’s been nearly a year of talking about everything and nothing, while our kids played and fought like cousins. Heat? One person always had sunscreen in their backpack. Snow? We dressed in heat layers and parkas. On New Years, we planned a piñata smashing to give 2020 the sendoff it deserved. The day after Thanksgiving, we had a “Black Friday” playdate. On Halloween, we spread out in the playground so the kids could “trick or treat” among the adults, making sure to have toys in addition to just candy so that one of the children with special needs (and a special diet) could still have fun. We spent holidays together, always outside. The only thing we really had in common was that we all lived within a couple blocks of this particular playground - and we were all taking COVID precautions seriously. Rain? We bought waterproof shoes,' writes Powers. 'Snow? We dressed in heat layers and parkas. A mom who found herself homeschooling her two young daughters full-time after she unexpectedly lost her job. A lawyer-dad who took conference calls from the park bench. A first-grade-teacher-turned-sitter who would regale us with stories about the anti-maskers of her Florida hometown as the three kids under her watch invented games with my two sons. Soon we were joined by an artist mom, who was taking computer programming classes at night, and her son. So our daily routine was born - a source of calm amid the endless cycle of doom and gloom on the news, of school openings and closures, of too much and not enough work, of sickness and death. In the late summer of 2020, after months of mostly quarantining inside, I sat on a playground bench six feet away from a friend whom I hadn’t seen in months she was cradling the baby I’d never before met, and our older kids ran around in masks, laughing and chasing each other.

Unlike the stories of parents who blew six-figures hiring private tutors, my pod came together organically - and, critically, cost nothing. On one hand, I’m thrilled that the COVID rates are low enough that I can expand my social circle beyond people who live within three blocks of my house, and that I can enroll my kids in things like swimming lessons again - but I am truly going to miss hanging out every day with my motley crew of parents and sitters and our kids, who range in age from 7 months to 7 years. My unlikely “pod” of friends - born out of necessity in the darkest days of the pandemic - is saying goodbye. I’m in the middle of the most wrenching breakup. Lindsay Powers is a Yahoo contributor and the author of You Can’t F*ck Up Your Kids: A Judgment-Free Guide to Stress-Free Parenting, and contributor to the forthcoming book, Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids: A Timeless Anthology by Zibby Owens. The authors kids on the playground that got them through the pandemic.

Might be time up pandemic pod