Surely, this was one of the strangest and most exhilarating back-to-school days of all time.

On Wednesday night, our good-humored, tireless principal sent a detailed email, complete with photographs, about what to expect in the morning, where to line up and how to get in.

In the “before-times,” we worried about making sure the kids had their homework with them before walking out the door.

Now, Los Angles Unified families must go online every school day and complete a health questionnaire. The district’s website then generates a “daily pass” with a QR code, to be scanned by a designated “welcomer” outside the schoolhouse doors.

And so it went Thursday: QR codes presented, temperatures taken, families hugging goodbye, kids disappearing into school, their grown-ups drifting away.

So normal, and yet so strange. The school day lasts only three hours. Classrooms are only half full. And everyone is masked.

At recess, children lined up and a nurse handed them a long cotton swab to roll around in each nostril for 15 seconds. Once a week, children will be tested for COVID-19 at school.

They aren’t supposed to touch each other when they play, though I have it on good authority that a game of touch tag was played Thursday.

“No one stopped us,” said my cheerful informant.

This has been among the most difficult school years in history, and some children (never mind their exhausted parents) may not ever fully recover from it. It may be a long time before we truly understand the fallout. I know that our household is one of the lucky ones; my niece flourished at home, in no small part because I let her have the office to herself and relegated myself to the kitchen. She’s far more adept at the computer now and has made excellent academic progress.

Last fall, when Zoom school resumed, we established a classroom pod with another family, switching off houses a few days a week. It was an attempt to combat our kids’ social isolation.

But we soon learned that leaving two tween girls alone together was not a great formula for focusing on schoolwork. The learning pod dissolved and became an after-school and weekend socializing pod.

Now the 11-year-old is back in school, and the house is incredibly quiet. No one is bounding downstairs every hour announcing, “I’m starving!”

I miss my niece’s squeals of delight, the sound of chattering kids, the soothing voice of the teacher reading aloud.

On balance, however, these are things I can live without.

Robin Abcarian is an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times.