Plague Diary: Gifts

I try to find the good in things.

To be grateful because life is too short to spend it complaining about what I didn’t get or who got more.

Or what isn’t that should be.

It’s easy to recognize a gift when it comes with a bow, wrapping paper and a card. When the day is good it’s easy to be grateful. It is harder to find blessings when the days are cold and the nights filled with dread. Ironically, that’s when I need it the most.

It’s almost 2 years now of watching my plans shatter like a snow globe pushed off a shelf by an indifferent cat.

Something else happens in times of pressure and crisis: the true nature of people are revealed. Everyone goes about each day rising to the challenge of finding a way through giving us the opportunity to see the heroes among us and to have a chance to be heroes too.

Wading through the quotidian we meet challenges we’d never have imagined at the beginning of 2020.

There are the life savers, the nurses, the doctors, paramedics. They are the first responders and those who remain with us in our final moments. In our hearts they are the ones who wear capes.

Then there’s all who do whatever is required to keep government and business going. They work from home alone in isolation. Work at home with their children for months on end.

Honestly, I don’t know how they do it but I admire the hell out of them for it.

Those of us who listen and stay away from friends we’d love to see. Keep a safe distance from parents and children we desperately wish we could embrace. Obey the masking tape arrows in the grocery store.

Wash hands?

Okay, I’ll wash my hands singing the Happy freakin Birthday song. Carry sanitizer and…what? Wear a mask?

Why do I have to….okay, just give me the mask.

The angry and the fearful – these are understandable parts of human nature. They react with belligerence because they don’t understand or they’re afraid of what is happening to family members. I may not like that side of my nature but it’s there nonetheless.

We can see how the people around us rise or react to a challenge. My parents saw it in the depression of the 30’s and WWII. We’re seeing it now.

It’s hope. Not wrapped up pretty with a bow on it but it is there, keeping us going.

Just take a moment to be thankful and then get on with it.

All photos are mine, i.e. the author