And then I see the woman wave her hand for her friend to join her. She’s still dancing and laughing and she’s wiggling her fingers at a friend. The friend stands up, starts dancing, makes her way toward her friend and they dance out of view. I look behind me and see that others have started to dance where they are, with their groups, in their spots. I think about how this has been such a longtime coming. We’ve been waiting for months to hug our friends and go to concerts and, my gosh, to just dance.

Sometimes it’s so easy to congratulate a benchmark in other peoples lives when that benchmark is tangible: a ring, a graduation certificate, a birthday, the purchase of a house. But it had me thinking about how many things we don’t celebrate. How many milestones are people passing every day with a Goliath-sized strength and that we don’t even applaud?

We’re coming out the other side of a long year and a half (I think I’ve been saying that for months but hey, a girl can only hope), and there are some things worth celebrating, here. Things that don’t have a nice ring on it or a piece of paper to acknowledge all of the hard work.