Fresh Start

Last week the New York Times published a piece by a psychologist about rebooting for a better life now that the pandemic appears to be winding down in this country. The article introduced a program called Fresh Start. Participants could sign up to have prompts texted to them every day for ten days to help them rethink their lives and establish new habits, routines, and attitudes. I didn’t sign up, but I have been imagining the prompts. Do you really want to read Middlemarch? When is the last time you laundered your sweat pants? Did you figure out what oregano is and do you know how to use it to make pizza? If you have small children, are you practicing speaking in complete sentences when they are asleep? Have you made a plan yet for what to do with leftover hand sanitizer? Where did you put your boots? You have a puppy? Seriously? 

While the pandemic continues to devastate communities around the world, the U.S., under intelligent and organized national leadership (sigh of relief – finally), has managed to get things under control. And with this new step forward, the psychologist writing for the NYT explains that people think of their lives in chapters and a collective chapter in ours has just ended, with a new one beginning. At the beginning of a new chapter, we have a greater capacity to establish fresh and healthier routines, both for daily living at a granular level and for our lives overall in broader strokes. Rather than returning to a vanished normal (did it ever exist?), we can rethink how we want to live our lives. We can make a Fresh Start. 

I would say that I jumped the gun on this Fresh Start new chapter thing by a few months. I am emerging from the pandemic having already downsized my stuff, moved to Oregon after 43 years in my beloved California, sold that behemoth of a house, rented a little apartment, and become an on-call babysitter for the two little boys who are the center of my universe. I am entering this new reality to find myself laughing maniacally at things that a three-year-old thinks are funny (such as shouting BOO then jumping around like a deranged kangaroo) and changing five-alarm poopy diapers on a supersized toddler who eats more than I do. Not rain nor sleet nor dark-of-night nor global pandemic can keep a Jewish grandmother from her grandchildren. It took me a little while to reorganize, but here I am. 

In my Fresh Start, I have a gluten-free bakery and a four-story gym with an astonishing array of shiny strength-training machines. It does not compare to the little gym I used to go to before. After not going to the gym for more than a year, I have row upon row of equipment at my disposal. If I look hard enough I will probably find a machine in there somewhere that will work the muscles in my eyelids. I have discovered bread and cinnamon rolls again at the mind-blowing gluten-free bakery. If I’m not hallucinating, I’m actually buying a challah every week. I lost ten pounds during the move, then started to gain it back in cinnamon rolls, then started to lose that off at the four-story gym. My body is so confused. 

On Fridays I do a little Shabbat ceremony before dinner every week with the grandchildren. The three-year-old says “you’re setting it up” when I put the candles in the candleholders, pour the grape juice, and cover the challah. He loves to pull his chunk of challah after the blessing. Soon he’ll know the blessing by heart. The toddler pulls his chunk of challah too, and we indulge his love affair with grape juice. He points enthusiastically and shouts at the candles periodically during the evening, chitter-chattering at them in his secret language. I get to bless the children. May the spirit of the universe, that permeates all things, protect them from harm and bring them peace. 

I see in the news that many wells in California are running dry and there is no rain in sight, no snow pack from a painfully dry winter. It rained here every day this week. Sad that I am for California, land that I love, I feel a greater sense of relief than I ever imagined I would feel to have fled the drought and the upcoming fire season to the South. Certainly there is summer fire danger here, but not to the extent in my previous home. My hair is curling up in this damp weather in ways it hasn’t for decades. Who am I? Who do I want to be? How long has it been since I asked myself these questions? I contemplate my options, my actions, my choices, my opportunities. Where do I want to place my focus, my time, and my energy in this Fresh Start? 

I’m not bringing you astonishing news when I say that home is not a place, it’s in our hearts. Locked in the house with my husband during the pandemic, I fell in love with him all over again. Relegated to the computer screen to visit with my children, I spent more time with them than I have in years and appreciate them now more than ever; dazzled that I could have possibly raised such brilliant, compassionate, gifted human beings. Who was I to dare such a thing? How did I achieve such success? Prevented from embracing my grandsons, I quit my old life without hesitation and stepped boldly into a new one where I am present to wrap them in my arms. 

I think of that Chinese character for crisis that combines characters for danger and opportunity. The pandemic brought all of us crisis. What do we do with that? What positive value do we make from it? Where do we go from here? I am grateful that I and those dear to me survived the danger, that I recognized the personal opportunity open to me, that my husband agreed with me about the nature of that opportunity, and that we seized the moment and took the leap together. This move was not easy. I feel like I suffered the hazards of the Oregon Trail to get here, metaphorically speaking; I survived versions of starvation and snakebite, having my wagon stolen (slapped around by beastly interstate movers), contending with rampant disease, being shot at by renegade train robbers, and all that. But I made it to Oregon. What a process! If you had told me one year ago that this is where I would be now, I would have laughed you off and told you to guess again. 

I love my new life.

 

The usual image for Oregon Trail is the covered wagon. Since that is an image that brings horror to Native peoples, I didn't want to use it. Instead here is a photo of the actual trail.

 

 

 

 

 

On the Move Again

Heraclitus is oft quoted as saying that the only constant in life is change. I would argue that there are more constants than that. The constant of the transcendence of love. The constant of the inevitability of death. The constant of the smoke detector chirping only in the middle of the night to alert you of a dead battery. The constant of the wild turkeys making a holy mess scratching up the front yard looking for dinner. The constant of the position of the stars in the night sky. But it is true that change happens with steadfast regularity.

I would say that I enjoy change, although it doesn’t happen as frequently in my life in recent years as it did when I was young. While in college, I moved around a lot. For a dozen years I never lived in one place more than ten months at a time. My philosophy was something like, “when the stove gets real dirty then it’s time to move.” I could fit everything I owned, including two cats and a dozen houseplants, in my car, which was an olive-green Volare station wagon. Actually, I didn’t have a car or even know how to drive until I was nearly twenty-two, when I moved to St. Louis to attend a PhD program in English at Washington University. After hearing from many people that I needed a car to live in the Midwest, and in the St. Louis area in particular, I decided to learn to drive. Before my move to St. Louis, while visiting my parents for a month before heading to Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont for the summer, I got my driver’s permit and had my mother take me out to practice. I learned to drive (more or less) in two weeks (without causing the death of Mom although I came close to it), passed the test, and bought the Volare. I wound up with that ridiculous vehicle because I wanted to buy a VW bus but my mother feared that, having just learned to drive, I wouldn’t be able to handle a VW bus because (as she said) the turning radius was different from that of a car. She thought I’d crash the VW bus. So, in a classic Jewish mom lifesaving move, she offered to buy me a used car instead if I bought something else. Since I needed a vehicle large enough to transport my belongings, she suggested a station wagon. She found the Volare. Wearing my patched hippie jeans and sporting my untamed mane of Jewish curls, I wound up improbably driving a starkly middle-class suburban vehicle that looked like something I had borrowed from my father. It’s just as well since I probably would have been pulled over every fifteen minutes by the cops if I drove a VW bus. For the next few years, behind the wheel of a giant motorized martini-olive, I kept dreaming about the VW bus that got away.

Once I met my husband Ron and had someone to clean the stove for me when it got dirty, I tended to stay put for longer. Then we got married and started a family, and that put an end to my wanderings. With two small children and another one on the way, we shot the moon in 1991 and moved from Berkeley to our forty acres of remote forest at McNab Ranch. That’s a famous family story, which many of my readers have heard already, including the part about the first night we were out on the land at our country home when my Chicago-born-and-bred husband turned to me and said, “Where the f--- are we?” That moment resulted in the creation of the where-the-heck-are-we sign that held pride of place on the road leading to our property for nearly two decades. My point is that I have never feared making big change. It’s good for the soul to shake things up now and then.

After our magical years raising the children at the Ranch, we moved in off the land. That move was precipitated by an emergency situation that made up my mind. One night at the Ranch, Ron’s blood sugar dropped dangerously low (he’s diabetic), the glucagon shot malfunctioned when I tried to use it, and I had to call 911. It took the ambulance half an hour to get to our house. Fortunately, Ron is still alive. But I said, “That’s it. We’re out.” We sold the property and moved less than a year later. Our house in town is five minutes from the ER. I have had to call an ambulance quite a few times in the thirteen years we have lived here and the paramedics can get here in less than five minutes. Sorry Grim Reaper, Ron’s a hard man to kill.

Why am I reflecting on changes and moves at this moment? Because in two weeks we move to Portland, Oregon after forty-three years in California. I anticipate loving my new life in the far Pacific Northwest; however, I will always consider myself a Californian and think of myself as a climate chaos refugee who fled the inferno. When we moved from Berkeley to the Ranch, we had to deal with a lot of craziness from the people who bought our Berkeley house because their realtor was as reasonable as a sack of cats. To cope with the stress and insomnia, Ron started watching a French children’s show broadcast out of Montreal that starred a talking pineapple puppet. When he woke up in the middle of the night, he would find the talking pineapple on the TV and watch an episode. The French-talking pineapple got him through the move (and gave him a somewhat-French accent for a few weeks, very sexy). Now he is coping with bouts of stress and insomnia by watching Steve Irwin swimming with sharks. This apparently calms him down. (The sharks do not speak French.) Perhaps he finds the vision of someone in more danger than himself soothing. Perhaps he identifies with a man encircled by deadly sea creatures. I have never understood how that man’s mind works. He keeps me guessing on purpose.

So this is the part where I say farewell to the beautiful land that I have loved. But don’t cry for me California because I am going to live near my grandsons. I doubt I will care so much about the weather, the landscape, the size of my new apartment, or the luxurious absence of the necessity to remain on evacuation warning for six months out of the year, because I will be too busy keeping a toddler from eating the crayons and chasing a three-year-old on a scooter around the apartment complex. As Obama said, “change we can believe in.” I’m down with that.

The Time for Being Heartbroken is Long Past

  

It has been a difficult week, although not surprising. Not for me and those in my circle anyway. Didn’t you expect this sort of thing would happen? Haven’t you expected it ever since Election Day 2016? If anything is surprising then it’s how many people just woke up to it now, at the tail end of the destructive cycle. If anything came as a surprise it was that we went so long before this particular version of hatred and violence happened. I am also surprised that so few people died in the mayhem. I keep hearing people say that they are heartbroken, and I ask myself when my heart broke because it sure wasn’t this past week. How long ago was it? I would say that my heart first broke when I was eight years old and I saw images of children of African descent engaging in peaceful protest as part of the Civil Rights Movement being beaten against the wall with powerful water cannons in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 at the order of Bull Connor.

My heart broke decades ago when, as a child, I began to understand the kind of country I live in, the kind of world I live in, the level of hatred out there. My heart broke when I saw injustice right before my very eyes on TV. My heart broke a long, long time ago. What I feel this week is outrage. What I feel this week is fury. And, if I’m being honest, I feel some measure of smugness because I can say that I knew this is where we were going to wind up when I wept in my husband’s arms on Election Night 2016. This is where I have said we were going to wind up. And yup here we are.

The image from Wednesday that disturbed me most was the Confederate flag flying inside the capitol rotunda (carried by a rioter), and it did not break my heart. There were a great many disturbing images to choose from, but that one hit me hard; and yet I was outraged by that image, not broken-hearted. When I dug deeper, I discovered that the portrait in the background in that Confederate flag photo is a painting of Senator Justin Morrill, an abolitionist from Vermont who helped frame the Fourteenth Amendment (adopted in 1868), which granted rights to those freed from slavery. The fact that he had his watchful eye on that flag from his perch in history settles me and gives me hope. It reminds me that the best of what we are walks alongside the worst of what we are. Both at the same time. Thus, on the same day as that display of violence, hatred, and anti-democracy, Georgia, a state as deep in the South as the Alabama of Bull Connor, made a tectonic shift and voted to send a man of African descent (minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church no less) and a Jew to the Senate to represent a former slave state. I am reminded by these juxtapositions that change happens thanks to the enormous hard work and commitment of folks like Stacey Abrams.

America is a country filled with those juxtapositions. White supremacists waving Confederate flags and signs with swastikas storming the capitol are a part of this country. Native American protestors peacefully demonstrating to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline from endangering the delicately balanced ecosystem and poisoning the water are a part of this country. Racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic Americans who believe they have the right to demand control of the government by force live in the same country where the Wall of Moms stands peacefully to protect Black Lives Matter protestors, to protect the future of our children and grandchildren. I won’t delve too far into the injustice and double standard of the demonstrably tender way the police treated so many of those violent and destructive white anarchists rioting because of a threat to their beloved entitlement compared to the police brutality experienced by peaceful Black demonstrators protesting racial injustice (or even walking to the store to buy a snack). We all know that if the people at the capitol on Wednesday had been Black, they would have been face down on the concrete with a knee on their neck in an instant. The National Guard descended on Portland faster than they were called out to quell the violence in DC on Wednesday. This is in plain sight and much has been written about it (see Michelle Obama’s statement).

Certainly humans pose the greatest danger to one another, this country, and the planet. Humans are the most predatory, destructive creatures on Earth. And yet we are also creatures capable of extraordinary and boundless love for one another and for the splendid other creatures who share the planet with us. We are capable of tremendous gratitude and appreciation for the beauty and magnificence of this world of ours, of its inhabitants. This is who we are and who we always have been. We are imperfect creatures struggling to transcend the worst in ourselves to become the best in ourselves through an ongoing process of evolution. I mourn the death of the MAGA-follower Ashli Babbitt along with that of Police Officer Brian Sicknick. No one deserved to lose their life in that madness. Ashli and Brian were each someone’s child, someone’s friend, someone’s beloved.

My heart broke when I was eight and I realized what horror people are capable of but I have lived my life with that heartbreak and have worked to transcend that realization, to salvage a love for the wonder and magic of our world from the wreckage of human failing. I choose love over hate every single day. My email address is jazznkugel – that’s us, my husband and I, the marriage of a Black and a Jew. I rarely think about the larger ramifications of that because he is simply the man I love, not a cog in a social construct. Every day I live a celebration of the possibility (now the reality) of a Black and Jew going to the Senate to represent Georgia. Change happens.

Below is a photo taken in November 2016 of a Native American woman protestor kneeling in prayer at the Dakota Access Pipeline while police sprayed her with water in freezing temperatures. Many protestors were sprayed with water and suffered hypothermia as a result. They can beat us but they cannot change our hearts.

 

Mní Wičóni. Water is Life.

Guest Blog from Ian Elder about an Unusual Night at the Opera

I have struggled since 2016 to find my way back to being a humorist, and to giving my blog readers a laugh, an insight, and a worthwhile read all rolled into one. I hope to get better at that in the coming year. (Is that a New Year’s Resolution? Uh-oh.) I want to end this dreadful year with something fun and different. I have never had a “guest blogger.” My friend Ian, who lives in England, sent me the following account in an email. It’s just too good not to share, so I asked him if I could put it up on the blog and he gave me permission to do it. (You will notice that there are some “Britishisms” in the language.) Without further ado, here is Ian’s description of an unfortunate performance of Tosca that he witnessed in Prague. Enjoy, my friends.

Tosca was an opera I had never seen and I was really looking forward to it, at the National Theatre in Prague. Unfortunately, the director was determined to impress the production with his own stamp of creativity. Would that he had not.

There is a scene in a church where Tosca prays and asks for divine guidance in her predicament. At this point the set included a statue of the Virgin Mary. The problem was that this was not an inanimate marble statue as such, but a very much alive young woman, wearing a white see-through piece of chiffon. This revealed her very perky bosom which, being naked under the shift, instantly distracted everyone’s attention from Tosca - including mine. Worse was to come.

At the conclusion of Tosca’s prayer, the Virgin slowly descended through a trapdoor. Unfortunately the device which provided the powered platform for her disappearance needed badly to be oiled; it therefore shuddered and jerked. As a result, the perky bosom was jiggling up and down for all to admire, the more so as the trapdoor kept getting stuck, then suddenly released. Whatever it was that poor Tosca was singing, it was to nil effect - since everybody was focused on the bouncing bosom as it left the stage, destined for the crypt (and probably a warm pullover).

Following on from this example of the director's wizardry, as the entire audience tried to switch back to Tosca’s plight, a conveyor belt started up, above the stained glass window. What now?

This was a young man of about twenty or twenty one, I would say, who reminded me of Rocky in the Rocky Horror Picture Show - well built, tanned, and good looking. He was wearing a pair of angel wings on his back and a posing pouch in front. 

Of shining golden hue. 

Nothing else. 

Just a posing pouch. 

Of golden hue. 

Glittering.

Riveting indeed.

Now, I might have admired such a view of youthful athleticism had it been in the “Escape Nightclub” of Prague - wings optional - but in Tosca??? Again, the eponymous heroine was sidelined, as all attention (well, at least mine) was now diverted to the hope that the conveyor belt would not judder and make the angel jiggle. Too much, perhaps. His journey from East to West complete, he disappeared from view, leaving me puzzled, perplexed, and bamboozled. What did all this mean? Did it mean anything? What was the angel doing after the show? 

Of course, I felt sorry for Tosca and in my sympathetic imagination, during the interval, recreated the moment she received the letter from the Czech State Opera asking her to take the starring role. At last, her years of training and acting presence would reap rewards. "DIVA! Moi?" For this? I read in the programme that the director was known for his wacky approach. Indeed, he had won an award for it. From South Moravian Television. Enough said.

Act 2 was more orthodox. Tosca was back in church (her being devout is part of the drama). The audience was on tenterhooks as to whether Mary and Gabriel would reappear. They did not. Tosca was getting the attention she deserved. Until ... the angelic conveyor belt started up.

This time, there was a fat lady making her way across the stained glass window, with all the convenience of the transport assistance. At least she was fully clothed - to everyone's relief, as she was a mature matron. But why was she there? What was the symbolism? Was it that “it is not over until the fat lady sings”? No, it could not be that: Tosca still had a ways to go before thwarting an attempted rape by stabbing her seducer to death, as is the frivolous frippery of an opera libretto. Nor did the fat lady sing, scotching that theory.

The dénoument (Christian woman murders rapist in self defence) was eventually reached. But it was all a blur. I confess - I wouldn't recognise a single note of this opera, were I to be tested. All I remember is the wackiness and the facetiousness of props and personages.

That is the story.

 

And Ian is sticking to it. Thank you for this, Ian. For more laughs, I recommend Dave Barry’s year in review roundup of 2020. Here is a link to it at the Boston Globe, but it’s around at other sources. Now there is a master at humor. Happy New Year all.

What I Learned from Living in the Pandemic

 

Recently, after living in the pandemic these many months, I paused to reflect on the ways in which the pandemic has changed my life. I was already somewhat of a recluse and I have worked from home for more than twenty years. I do like to socialize, but on a limited basis. I enjoy solitude, especially walking in wild nature and reading or writing in the privacy of my home. So my lifestyle has not changed that much, but more has changed than I might otherwise have thought. I have learned a thing or two. 

The most important thing I learned about myself from this pandemic is that l live too far away from my grandchildren. I live in NorCal and they live in Portland. Before the pandemic, I flew to Portland to see them every two or three months. Now, with air flight out of the question, my husband and I resorted to driving, and we have visited only twice this year. In the meantime, we skype with the boys, now ages three and one. I have wondered if the baby thinks we live in a computer and how he reconciles that image of us on the screen with the real people when we arrive at his door. The three-year-old can carry on a complex conversation with me on skype, and we have established a cherished habit of reading stories so when he sees me on his computer he will chat for only a few minutes before he says, “I want a book, please.” I learned from this pandemic that I want to live near those children and I want to be a large part of their everyday lives as they grow up. They are my greatest joy. The logical step is to move to Portland. Follow the gold. My husband heartily agrees. The pandemic brought home to me the realization that after four terrific decades, my time in California has come to an end. 

Even prior to the pandemic, and for many reasons, we contemplated moving to a different living situation. The rampant fires in California have had a powerful impact on us. For the past four years, we have remained evacuation-ready for half of the year because we live in one of those notorious urban-to-woodland-interface areas. Our lives are already precarious enough without the added stress of remaining on alert to evacuate at any moment in the midst of a pandemic. There are other compelling reasons to move, such as no longer wishing to maintain such a large house and yard. While we have discussed a move, we never summoned the energy or impetus to do it. The pandemic brought our priorities and vision of the life we want to live in the coming years into perspective and gave us the push we needed to get real and get busy. Does anyone want a lawn mower? 

The pandemic has very much reminded me that people matter the most and belongings are extraneous. As we check in with loved ones regularly about health and financial security, avoid seeing people in person, and watch the death toll rise, we cherish even more all those dear to us whom we may lose to this thing at any time. Because my husband has diabetes and other serious health issues, I have lived with death at my elbow for decades. I lost track long ago of how many times I have saved his life during a severe hypoglycemic episode. Diabetes is no picnic. But loving someone with it makes for an intense and deep relationship because we are keenly aware that we may be parted at any moment. His precarious health helps me let go of the small stuff, and to feel grateful to still have this man no matter what foolishness he manages to get up to. We share the belief that our marriage is sacred and we do not take it lightly. So I already had a sharp awareness of what matters even before the pandemic, but it certainly has a way of reminding me of it every day. 

I love to share the story of my friends Ken and Carol, whose house was struck by lightning and caught on fire. I met them in college where I took a class from Ken (then a graduate student) in romantic poets. They have been married nearly fifty years and have raised two children together. They were at home when the fire started and they grabbed their computers and car keys and fled. While waiting for the fire department to arrive, and watching their home go up in flames, Ken (a Wordsworth man to the core) turned to Carol and said, “You are all the home I need.” The house did not burn down, but required extensive repairs to several rooms. 

As an exercise in finding truth and meaning in the experience of living through a plague, I am working on a list of things I have learned from the pandemic. At the risk of making assumptions about my own self-importance by imagining that you might find my list of interest, I share it with you below. Here it is so far. 

- I’m insignificant in the grand scheme of things, less than a speck in the universe.

- I want to help make the world a better place, but my impact ability is limited. Small things can make an important difference. There is great value in doing small things.

- Walking alone is a gift and I am grateful to be able to do it every day. It’s my meditation and it keeps me balanced.

- I must make an effort to communicate regularly with people dear to me using the technology available because life is fleeting and I may lose them at any time.

- Good scotch whiskey is wonderful.

- I love the sensual pleasure of reading actual physical books.

- There is a massive amount of lousy content available for streaming and trying to find something worth watching is a plunge down a rabbit hole. On the other hand, finding something worth watching is great fun and a delight. So I shouldn’t give up on TV.

- I miss my children and want to spend more time hearing about their lives.

- I can cut my own hair and it doesn’t look half bad. It looks better on screenchat than in person. Cool.

- I don’t need to leave my house for much. If I have food and books then I’m good.

- Almost anything can be bought online and delivered to my door. God help me.

- My house and my yard are too big and require too much work. I would be happy renting (not owning) my home for the rest of my life. The American Dream can go hang.

- My husband and I only need one car between the two of us.

- My luck at cards is rotten.

- Rereading books I loved the first time around is a pleasure.

- I’m relieved not to participate in airline travel and encouraged to see how much reduced air travel has positively impacted the environment.

- Eating sandwiches and snacks in the car during a road trip is excellent and I like it that we reach our destination sooner because we don’t stop.

- My hearing is so compromised that I can’t understand people unless I can see their mouths to read their lips. Masks make that impossible. Accessibility is a huge issue for me and many other people.

- The up side to zoom synagogue is that I can sing along on mute as loud as I like and have a blast without concern for the sensibilities of the other congregants.

- Millions of people would rather die than recognize scientific fact or truth if they think science or truth threatens their political allegiance or sense of self. Go figure.

- Roses continue to be the most extraordinary creatures.

- Politics can destroy families and friendships even though it shouldn’t be that way.

- An awful lot of people eat out a lot of the time and either don’t know how to cook at home or don’t like to do it. This astonishes me. I never eat out. What is the appeal of having someone else make you a sandwich?

- If I could have a superpower I would like the ability to make people laugh. Either that or the ability to know lots of languages, starting with ASL.

- Making love to my husband never gets old. That was not meant to make you laugh but if it did then maybe I’m on my way to a superpower.

- My story is not as interesting as other people’s stories. I need to shut up and listen.

- Health is multidimensional and maintaining health is a spiritual exercise.

- When you are living at ground zero for climate chaos during a pandemic, and the trees are in flames around you, an earthquake is small potatoes.

- It’s astonishing how far a vitamin pill can bounce when you drop it on a tile floor.

- I have so much for which to be grateful and gratitude is the basis for joy.

- My greatest joy at this time in my life is my grandchildren. 

Not everything on my list is something I’ve learned exactly right now in the pandemic – some of it I knew already but it seemed relevant or I feel it more acutely these days. It’s a bit difficult to reflect on living through historic times while right in the middle of living through historic times, a bit like time traveling. I wonder what children and young people will have to say about this time in history when they grow up and look back on it. What will they say they learned? What will we say about how it changed our lives and the world in which we live? What have you learned from the pandemic? 

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Love happens. Grief happens. Death happens. Life happens. Joy happens. Grandchildren happen. Yay for grandchildren.

 

A wee dram of  Scotch whiskey to warm me up and see me through troubled times.