Slowly…ever so slowly…the Covid surge from holiday travel and gatherings has begun to come down. My friend sends me the West Virginia data every morning like clockwork. And we examine it for any promising sign that things are improving. I know the dominant driver of this decline is the fact that it’s January. We don’t have too many places to go. No holidays, no celebrations, no huge gatherings. Just football and fireplaces and reading a good book.
Hindsight is always 20/20. They asked that we forego the family gatherings of Thanksgiving and Christmas. They warned us what would happen. And it did. And it was even worse than they thought. I worked in medicine for 42 years. I cannot imagine going through what those frontline workers have endured over the last three months. There will be fallout from this long after herd immunity is achieved. We will find the ripple effect reaching points we cant even imagine right now.
The relief they must feel when they see the numbers coming down. When they see vaccines coming. When they see you staying at home and wearing a mask when you’re out…not only for yourself and your loved ones, but for THEM, as well. I know it must give them hope. I know it does me. There is a very real part of me that feels guilty that I received the vaccine and my beautiful daughters haven’t. One is a house spouse right now, and she probably already had Covid. But the other is a teacher and will be expected to go into the classroom without immunity. And that scares the h*** out of me.
In the overall grand scheme of things, the collective stress level is coming down, I think. I know I feel it. As I sat down to write this, I had to really think about something to say. I mean, seriously…we watched football, sat by the fire, took naps. There are no alerts buzzing on my phone. No Breaking News Reports on the television. There are many things that are still uncertain, but living through it all has become far more promising.
We’re having a fairly easy winter here in West Virginia so far. We have a little snow predicted this week, and one night is supposed to get down into the high teens. But that is so much better than the winters I lived through in Colorado when it wasn’t unusual to wake up to twenty-four below zero and three feet of snow this time of year. I’ll take this any day of the week…especially when we get those beautiful sunny days that are exceedingly rare here.
As of last evening, I’m up to September 19, 2016 in copying my blog to my website. I have to copy through November 14, 2016 and I’m done! Great progress and a blessed relief. Pushing myself to complete this massive undertaking has been a labor of love and a walk down memory lane at the same time. I’m at the point where I moved into my grandparent’s farmhouse and was fighting a flea infestation from the farm cats. That was quite an ordeal at the time. Yet, I have such lovely memories of living on the farm.
I only have one trip to town on my schedule this week. I am sure I will have the website completed by this time next week and I can move on to the next thing. The weights are lifting, day by day.
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“Worry is a heavy burden, but a kind word always brings cheer. You are better off to do right, than to lose your way by doing wrong.”
Proverbs 12:25-26 CEV