'21 family reunion videos are making us all feel better

Josh Reynolds, who works in tech sales and lives in American Fork, Utah, got vaccinated without telling his extended family. Two weeks after his second shot, in the middle of April, Reynolds, 29, took his wife and younger brother, both also vaccinated, and his 6-month-old daughter to New Jersey. They rented a car at the airport and pulled up outside the house of his uncle, whom they hadn't seen since before the pandemic.

"We lost my dad two years ago, and we've always been close to that particular uncle. We chat every day, and he's like an older brother," he said, adding, "He hadn't even met my daughter."

Hiding on the street, they waited for 45 minutes for his uncle to get home -- and then they rang the doorbell.

"The surprise was so much better than I could have thought," said Reynolds, who had imagined the moment many times before it happened. "My aunt is crying. My cousin ran up and took my daughter out of my hands. The puppy bolted out the front door."

This being 2021, he captured the entire moment on his phone and shared it on Twitter.

"With the absolute awful year everybody has had with the pandemic, it almost feels like there is no end in sight," he said. "To show people, 'Look, we are vaccinated, we can see our family again,' I felt like the world needed to see this."

Videos of fully vaccinated people surprising their loved ones are making the rounds on social media. The clips, which fall somewhere between "Candid Camera" and military homecomings, show family members spontaneously laughing, crying, hugging and wrapping their heads around the fact that someone they haven't seen in more than a year is there in the flesh.

People's motives for posting them are pure. Some want to share their bliss; others want to show the power of vaccines. These surprises take work to pull off, and a friendly competition has even emerged.

"I don't want to put one video [above] the other, since they are all so happy, but selfishly I think ours is the best," Reynolds said. "My uncle played basketball in college. To see him get off the ground that high and hear his voice scream so high, it was incredible."

It has become Meryn Hayes' favorite pastime to watch these types of videos. "I see them on Twitter scrolling through my feed. I see them on TikTok," she said. "I would say over the last two to three weeks, they've started becoming more frequent.

"I see two or three every day. If they stop coming up, I'm going to find them because they make me so happy."

She has cried at every single one. "Part of this is imagining myself as a parent who hasn't seen my child in a year," said Hayes, 33, a producer at an animation studio in Raleigh, N.C. "Seeing people come back together, it makes my heart swell."

Even some people who consider themselves generally private are sharing the moment on social media, an indication of how all-encompassing such a moment is.

Debbie Lowenthal, 50, has been separated from her 77-year-old mother by more than 2,500 miles during the pandemic. She works for a hospital and nursing association in Juneau, Alaska, and her mother lives alone in Pleasanton, Calif. "In the spring of 2020, she would tell us she thought she might die alone, that she would never seen us again," Lowenthal said.

So after Lowenthal and her college-age daughter were vaccinated, they planned a surprise visit. "I didn't want her to worry about us coming or having to clean her house," Lowenthal said.

Lowenthal wanted to post the video on social media to make a point about vaccines. But as a private person who hardly ever posts, she was nervous. "I sent it to one friend and said, 'Do you think I should post it?'" Lowenthal said. "She said, 'I'm bawling, yes, show other people.' I did it. I haven't really even watched the whole thing. It's too emotional for me, and I don't like seeing myself on video."

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