That smell of french fries, hot dogs and beer is unmistakable. As is the childlike excitement when you walk through the gate.

The feelings and emotions you get when you go to a baseball game at your favorite team’s stadium are the same things we missed over the last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sense of love from being with our family and friends. The nervous energy of a basketball team stepping out on the court for a big game. The pride of a parent watching from the stands. The familiar feelings we associate with our normal lives, which we’ve learned just how much we took for granted.

As vaccinations increase, we’ll finally start moving toward the return to normal we all crave. Wrapped up in that return to normal is making up for lost time.

While insignificant in the big picture, a big thing I missed during the pandemic was going to Orioles games at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Growing up 30 minutes from Baltimore, I’ve gone to O’s games every spring and summer for 15 years.

I’ve gone to games with my maternal grandfather, whom I affectionately call Grandpop, basically every summer since I was a kid. Baseball isn’t his favorite thing in the world — he made no attempts to hide the newspaper he’d bring to the game, and he’d occasionally doze off — but it was a way for him to spend time with his grandchildren, and it made us happy, so it made him happy, too.

As we both got older, I went to games with my friends more, and I’d usually only go to Opening Day with Grandpop, along with the rest of the family. But between the pandemic and my college years in Indiana, I hadn’t gone to a game with him in almost five years. So before I moved to New Hampshire to work for the Valley News, I took in another Orioles game with Grandpop, who was fully vaccinated by then.

The weather forecast showed rain for that Sunday afternoon all week, up until the night before. It ended up a beautiful — but hot — day in Baltimore.

While I was attentive during the game and followed the Orioles closely, Grandpop could recognize only Trey Mancini from the hometown team. But we both enjoyed the afternoon the same. We shared peanuts, took a midgame lap around the stadium and laughed at the Red Sox fan in our section who lost his voice from yelling so loud all game — heckling Orioles outfielders Anthony Santander and Cedric Mullins and cheering Red Sox outfielder Alex Verdugo.

We spent much of the afternoon reminiscing about prior games. As I sipped a beer, I couldn’t help thinking of the multiple times when, I was a kid, and Grandpop yelled, “One right here!” to a beer vendor walking through the aisles while pointing at me — and when the beer vendor looked up and started to crack open the beer, he saw Grandpop with his arm around me, laughing. Or the times when I made him wait out a rain delay far longer than he wanted to stay just because I loved being at the stadium. I asked him if he still would’ve come if it rained that day, and he emphatically said, “Not a chance!”

It became even clearer to me that day than it was before: It doesn’t matter what you’re doing; it’s who you’re doing it with. I so enjoyed spending the afternoon with Grandpop at the ballgame, but — especially given the quality of the game and the outcome, a 14-9 Red Sox win — it was just as much about spending time with him.

I’m extremely fortunate and grateful that I was able to see all of my grandparents as often as I did during the pandemic. COVID-safe dinners on the driveway, pulling up chairs on the porch while socially distanced, it all felt bizarre but oddly normal — because I was spending time with my loved ones.

While, yes, getting back with our families to baseball games and activities we’ve missed over the last year is a great feeling and an important step toward the return to normal, maybe a big lesson we should take from the pandemic is that the activities don’t matter. It’s the people around you that do.

So go to a ballgame, catch a movie, go out to dinner. Do all of those things — when it’s safe — that you missed during the pandemic. But whatever it is you do, just be grateful to spend time with the people you’re with.

These were always important values to me.

Now, I’d like to think it’s my new normal.

Seth Tow can be contacted at stow@vnews.com.