In 2019, when the month of May came and went, it did so with celebration.

It came with proms — girls dressed in gowns they had planned to wear for months, guys in tuxedos who made their parents tear up. It came with Mother’s Day brunches and highly anticipated movie premieres. It came with graduation days — from preschoolers in paper hats to high school seniors in their mortarboards to college students getting ready to start being real adults.

But then came May 2020. None of those things happened — at least, not the same way.

The coronavirus pandemic meant not only closing down restaurants and businesses to thin trickles of their normal streams of customers but changing the way we gathered together. We replaced graduation parties with graduation parades and birthday open houses with displays of balloons and signs on the lawn.

That will be ending soon.

Gov. Tom Wolf already had announced the lifting of most covid-19 restrictions on May 31, but on Tuesday, he went a step further and sooner. On Monday, indoor events can increase from 25% to 50% and outdoor events from 50% to 75% of maximum occupancy limits.

The governor highlighted what this means for businesses, and he isn’t wrong about that.

“We recognize the significant strain businesses have faced during covid-19 mitigation efforts,” Wolf said. “Throughout the last year and half, we have seen businesses continue to put the safety of their patrons first, and I believe they will continue to do so even with this capacity increase.”

But just as important is what this means for the people of Pennsylvania.

It means prom pictures and dance recitals, birthday parties and real graduations. It means not just staying healthy amid a pandemic but getting to live in our communities with our neighbors.

That is what a year of sacrifice and safety has built toward. It’s where we are now thanks to vaccines, masks and following the rules.

So let’s celebrate, but let’s not forget we are celebrating progress, not victory over the disease.

The pandemic is not over. Pennsylvanians still are getting sick and dying from covid, while hotspots flare up across the country and nations such as India are in a full-fledged crisis. There are still dangers, still variations, still reasons to be careful.

We can’t party like it’s 2019, but we don’t have to exist in the constant nervous tension of 2020 either. We can build on what we learned and appreciate what we lost over the past year. Distance is good, caution is smart; outdoor happenings are relatively safe, but we can gather indoors with situational awareness.

We can do this. We can have our cakes and eat them with friends, too. We just have to do it responsibly.

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