I’ve developed a morbid fascination with my “memories” from last year. Facebook does such a good job of reminding me to check them every day. It’s been interesting to look back a year and review things with the benefit of hindsight. (Side note: The phrase “hindsight is 20/20” has been permanently banned from my vocabulary, as is any other casual reference to anything 2020.)

What stands out the most to me is how quickly my attempts at good humor dissipated, how fast the novelty of quarantine wore off, and how much people have refused to change over the course of a year.

In March, we thought a few weeks of a shut down would bring things under control. By April, it was obvious that things weren’t going to just bounce back, but that didn’t stop me from optimistically reminding people to hang on to their tickets for the spring play, or say their prayers that we would still hold a swim championship, even if it meant opening summer swim season with a winter finale.

I had no idea how grateful I would be a year later to finally get to see a spring drama production on stage, with all cast members wearing clear masks, masked up myself, and seated at least 6 feet away from everyone else in the limited audience. I can’t believe I’m sitting here one year later, and I still don’t have an answer for my little swimmers as to whether we will have a “normal” season this year.

Boy Scout merit badges were a lifeline for a while. Google meets and Zoom sessions with Scouts all around the country became a highlight of the boys’ lives for a few months. Although, when they ended up being online for school eight hours a day, they were quick to say, “Please, Mom, no more screen time, no more lectures, no more filling out Google Docs, etc.”

Imagine that. We recently resumed in-person scouting activities, and the boys hauled out their sashes, which, thanks to all the free time I’ve had, actually had their earned badges sewed on.

“That’s not my sash,” G insisted. I can’t believe he forgot the hours he worked on them last summer, sometimes three or four at a time.

One of our early traditions was weekend movie nights. We started watching all the Marvel movies again, beginning with Iron Man. Occasionally, we’d watch a newer release, or another classic that we happened to think of, but our Marvel marathon kept us going until midsummer. Since then, our movie watching habits have changed dramatically. The toll of being together all day, every day finally got to us, and when we were faced with time that wasn’t school or work or computer related, we all just wanted to be alone.

I was thinking that maybe the debut of “WandaVision” and “The Falcon” and the “Winter Soldier” might bring us back together, but it was not meant to be. By now, everyone is well schooled in the art of how to use all their devices.

The boys discovered that they could download Disney+ onto their phones and now, the little opportunists that they are, they will check out the latest episodes during study hall time (provided their school work is completed) and then badger me for the rest of the day to watch it, so they can talk about it and not reveal any spoiler alerts. Or, they just give up, and I have to suffer through the whole episode knowing exactly what’s going to happen, but watching it anyway, in case there are more significant things that they “forgot” to tell me.

I am genuinely hoping we can all head to the theater to watch “Black Widow” the old-fashioned way in July.

One other thing that stands out to me is all the little household projects that I planned, and executed, and photographed for all posterity. On the one hand, I have cleaned out a lot of closets in the past year. On the other hand, since no one has left the house in a year, other things got piled back into closets and doors got closed and things went out of sight and out of mind. I recently had to try to find three pairs of shin guards and soccer cleats that were just used as late as October. Since there was only about half of another winter sport season in between then and now, they shouldn’t have required an extensive excavation to unearth them from the bowels of the “sports bag closet,” but that’s exactly what was needed. I still ended up having to run to the store for a new pair of shin guards to replace ones that could not be located anywhere.

My house is living proof that nature abhors a vacuum, as it seems that every corner I managed to clean out and spruce up was immediately taken over by someone’s new hobby or something someone just had to keep away from their siblings.

As I sit here in the room I tried to reclaim as my home office, I can see one corner of the adjacent room that has been taken over by model and miniature painting, another corner full of photography and scouting camera equipment, and yet another corner full of dog training equipment and toys. I distinctly remember cleaning out each and every one of those corners at some point in the last year.

The other thing missing from my memories of the last year are the other people. Sure, we have a few, like when E’s amazing teacher surprised her on the first day of school, and they stood in our driveway fully masked up and 6 feet apart, or when G’s baseball team won their league championship, and all the coaches look dwarfed by the kids, as they are standing several feet behind them in the group picture.

But gone are the meetups with friends for ice cream, or the silly sleepovers with face masks and makeovers, or the school field trips. I truly can’t wait until I can take a picture of a bunch of sticky, smelly kids, with their arms around each other, grinning because they’ve just had the best day of their lives doing kid stuff again.

The historian in me looks at these photos from the past year and places them in context, and I realize that these memories, while priceless in their own right, are also going to be a record of what has to have been one of the weirdest years of our lives. There is much to laugh about, like when E dyed her hair pink, and G decided to get in on the fun and bleached half his hair. We didn’t care, it’s not like we had anywhere to go. Above all, they’re reminders that no matter how frustrating and bleak this past year has been, we’ve still found things we want to hold on to and remember forever.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.