Living in a Snow Globe

To say it has been a wild year is an understatement to say the least. I have been away from my blog for so long and I made a resolution on New Years 2021 to get back on track and I will be collaborating with my daughter as a guest poster too. The pandemic literally drained my creativity, sparked emotions I never knew I had and caused so much fear that sitting down to write a blog post, well was just not in me. On March 10th the first two confirmed cases for covid-19 were reported in Michigan; one in the county I live in and one in the county I work in. Since then, our lives have been thrown into an abyss like we have never encountered in our lifetime. No one could ever imagine just how tested we would be for the past 12 months. I remember in February of last year as with everyone else we watched on television and in new media this new virus that had shut down the city of Wuhan China. We all watched with a pit of uncertainty in the pit of being. Then when cases started showing up in Washington and on cruise ships, we knew it had arrived on our shores, still we could not have ever imagined then what our lives would soon become. My last dinner sitting down in a restaurant was on March 12th with friends at one of my favorite Italian places in metro Detroit, Antonio’s – whose bread alone makes them the thing legends are made from. On March 16th everything shutdown and we started months of quarantining and learning to adjust to being alone. My job was deemed critical infrastructure and our small team of six people could work at our location. The daily commutes took no time at all since the freeways and streets were practically deserted. The only shopping allowed was for groceries and pharmacies and even then, we all had so much pent-up dread that even that was a chore in its own. We soon discovered ways of battling back through delivery services, donning PPE and being as safe as we could possible be. We attended church from our living rooms, schools shut down in-person education and life as we knew it changes forever. No more sporting events, no more concerts, no more of so much! As a global community we were in this together and we learned about the virus and its dangers as we moved forward with testing and as pharmaceutical companies rushed to develop a vaccine. So much fear and so much stress caused our lives to feel as if we were living inside a snow globe, just as we thought the snow had settled it got shook again, shook really hard. Remember the discovery of giant Killer hornets, new variants of the virus discovered that made us think when this might if it ever would possibly end. The year was not a complete nightmare, in May my daughter Mal graduated from The Ohio State University with a degree in Integrated English and has since taken a job as a teacher in Hernando, Mississippi. Never would we have imagined holding her college graduation in our living room in front of a tv showing a very empty Ohio Stadium where over 20,000 graduates would have been for their commencement. It was to say the least, a unique experience. I could not have been prouder that day, her accomplishments were of who she was and her hard work, not for where a ceremony was held. In October we made a trip to visit Syd in the Adirondacks before she left Upstate New York to complete her doctorate in clinicals in other parts of the country. And we made our annual trip to an apple orchard for apples, fritters and cider. Holidays came and were completely different, instead of the normal 17-20 people celebrating together, it was just 4 and quite different than holidays and gatherings prior to 2020. The pandemic taught us we can preserve and move forward, people in quarantine taught themselves with the help of virtual meetings and the internet new skills, new hobbies new ways of being together. Canceling our yearly family reunion broke our hearts, but it did not break us a family or the love we have for our family. We checked on people more often, we cared for our fellow man more, in some respects it has made us stronger and better people in the meantime. We have learned how to be safe and to venture back into the world to explore it and its wonder and awe – churches have reconvened in a safe distance manner and we have become used to being six feet apart, wearing masks and washing our hands. It has awoken us to just how fragile life can be and how we took for granted so much. To date over 500,000 people have lost their lives in the United Sates and my heart breaks for the families and friends that lost someone. As I come back as Jeeves I hope to inspire you and share this pandemic journey with you for however many times the snow globe gets shook!

One of the Tik-Tok sensations that has come from the pandemic is the food creation and the development of new and unusual ways to eat. I also jumped on this new venture and discovered that whoever the genius is behind Baked Feta Pasta should be given a big high five. So, as we continue our journey in the face of Covid-19, there is hope on the horizon and things are starting to look less doom and gloom and more inspiring and much more hopeful, in the end we are in this together and we will ride out those snow globe shakes, together.