A while back the President compared our current situation with the pandemic to being at war. I felt at the time he was being a little overly dramatic but then again, maybe he has something there. I have often wondered what it was like in world war II, in London or the German cities, to be a civilian and hear the siren’s going off and wondering if this was the night a bomb found your house with you inside of it. You would hear the concussions all around you and wonder when your number was going to be up. On the upside you would never know what hit you but then maybe it would be a dud and you would just have to patch the hole in the roof.
Today in the midst of this pandemic we sit home trying to stay as far away as we can from everyone. But once or twice a week we sneak out to get some essentials and wonder if this is the day, you pick the loaf of bread that someone sneezed on. If that door handle to the grocery store was dripping with the virus or if when you punched accept on the key pad at the gas pump, there was a COVID- 19 germ just sitting there, waiting to go home with you. You ask yourself did I have my mask on properly? So many questions for sure.
This weekend I’m going to see my family at my son’s house in the cities. I haven’t seen any of them since last October when I headed down south for the winter. There is a new baby now 2 months old I have never held. Three other great grandkids, now toddlers and moms and dads, my grandkids. But you can only stay away so long. There is no upside here if I get infected. Maybe weeks in the hospital and maybe just the sniffles. And maybe it’s the last chapter but not the way I dreamed about it. Alone. All in all, it’s up to me to try and protect myself.
I’m not trying to make light of our situation. Too any people have been hurt already for that. Too many still left to be hurt. Food lines like we have never seen before. The richest country in the world and thousands of people going hungry. Yet farmers are euthanizing their livestock, plowing under their crops and dumping their milk, because there is no way to get them, to market. It seems like a bad dream. People are angry, revolting against the authorities, yet not many answers are forth coming. They say it will get worse before it gets better. That It’s not going away anytime soon. What’s going to happen when real desperation sets in? Will it be a few months or will it still be here next year and is the time coming when we just have to get back to business as usual and those who are most vulnerable and get sick become collateral damage and that’s sad if it comes to that-- but the sick may have to take one for the Gipper, because there is no other way. This thing is bigger than all of us right now.
Always in the past this country has found a way. I hope that is our mantra. I hope that at some point politics becomes a moot point. That we will find ways to help each other beyond banging pots and pans out the windows or Navy jets flying salutes overhead and someday when this is all over, we’ll have that more perfect union our forefathers talked about back when this country started and one that we could have had a long time ago but we got off track. It’s going to take some humble pie, far less greed, hate and selfishness and a whole new attitude from a lot of people. Let’s hope and pray for change.
No comments:
Post a Comment