We are supposed to have our second Covid shot today, but the weatherman says Mother Nature may not cooperate with us. I’m praying the roads are clear and the vaccine clinic isn’t rescheduled. I want to have as much time between the vaccine and my surgery as possible…not only to improve my chances of staying healthy on our trip to Florida, but also to make sure I feel my best when we get there.

I baked the Chocolate Chip Cookies yesterday. The turned out great…thick, golden around the edges, crispy on the outside, moist and chewy on the inside. Really sweet…but so flavorful. I rarely make a cookie recipe that you have to chill the dough. I don’t have the patience and when I bake cookies,, it’s usually because I’m having a hankering for something sweet and I don’t want to wait for it. Patience is not my virtue, really.

We also took down the Christmas decorations and alas…the living room window looks so bare and sad. The nights are getting visibly shorter though, so I’m not quite as upset about it as I would have been in early January. I carefully wrapped each precious ornament in newspaper and tucked them inside a big plastic bin to keep them safe till next year. I told Mr. FixIt as we toted them downstairs to the storage room…leaving them up this late will just make the time feel shorter till we put them up again.

As I was working on my genealogy yesterday, I ran across a 2nd great grandmother who was repeatedly listed as her mother’s sibling. I had such a hard time trying to figure out what was going on when I finally found her birth certificate. It turns out, her mother was unmarried and there was no father in the picture, so the grandparents registered the birth as their child. I suppose in the 1800’s, it was easier to get away with doing that. And, it was a proper way to save face. 

I imagine that happened a lot back in those days. It made me think about how complex genealogy will become in the generations to come. People living together without being married, having babies on their own, same sex marriages, and transgendered individuals may be difficult to trace two hundred years from now. Then again, it’s hard to even imagine the world two hundred years from now, isn’t it? I mean, look what’s happened in the last two hundred. If somehow George Washington could be transported to 2021, he wouldn’t recognize what we’ve done to his country.

These are things that keep me up at night. Well, actually…these are the things that I occupy my mind with when I can’t sleep. One game I play is imagining all the human things that are happening at the same time. There are babies being born and people dying…all at the same time…every minute of every day. People are marrying and divorcing. Tragedies are happening while at the very same moment, great celebrations take place. It makes me feel more connected to the greater web of humanity when I picture some people dancing in the rain while others are huddled inside, trying to keep warm. Some are fed and some are hungry. 

On the basest of levels…every single one of us is connected in some primal way. This is the thinking of climatologists, anthropologists, and philanthropists. This must be the way Bill Gates looks at the world and wonders how he can use his vast wealth and intellect to help humanity. When Mr. Virgo worked at the Hotel Jerome in Aspen, he and the general manager of the hotel were the only people with a high enough security clearance to work in the room at the Forstman-Little Conference. This was an event where people came together and talked about the world and how they see its problems. Notables from around the globe gathered…politicians, dignitaries, sports figures, news people, financiers…notables from all walks of life. I found it fascinating and would have given just about anything to sit quietly in the back of the room to listen.

We live such small lives…like ants in a colony…doing our thing, feeding our people, working to put food on the table. I find it refreshing to think larger from time to time, if for no other reason that to shake the cobwebs off and do something…anything…to create a lasting legacy, making my mark on the world. I was talking with Daughter #2 the other day about my writing. I told her…there may come a day, 100 years from now, when my descendants will stumble upon this blog and find it a fascinating glimpse into the life of their 3rd great grandmother’s world. That is another reason I write…and it makes me smile.

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“These are things we learned from our ancestors, and we will tell them to the next generation. We won’t keep secret the glorious deeds and the mighty miracles of the Lord. God gave his Law to Jacob’s descendants, the people of Israel. And he told our ancestors to teach their children, so that each new generation would know his Law and tell it to the next.”

Psalms 78:3-6 CEV