Day 297…
The time has come for us to put the Christmas decorations away. Technically, we are only up to nine ladies dancing, but it feels like it’s the time to start doing it.
Later today, I’ll go down to our storage unit and bring up the big plastic bins. We have a gigantic plastic bag that I think was originally intended to be used to get rid of a mattress, that we use to get the tree down to the basement. It’s held onto its needles very well, but the second that we touch it, I think they are going to shower down onto the carpet.
The one thing that we will leave up until spring are the remote-control LED candles in the windows. During the cold long dark days of winter, there is something comforting about them. This year we replaced the old ones we had with new ones that look a bit more realistic. The old ones chewed through batteries very quickly while these, after an entire month, are all still on their first set. They also flicker.
The cat will miss the tree. He doesn’t have the slightest interest in the ornaments, but he likes drinking the pine-infused water from its base. We have to leave a little opening in the tree skirt so that he can get at it.
Yesterday, I re-oiled his wooden bowl as he was starting to ignore it. Sure enough, he spent the entire afternoon with it.
Yesterday, I walked down to Times Square to see the new year sign lit up.
We missed the actual ball drop at midnight on New Year’s Eve because we were zooming with some friends. That afternoon, I had gone down to see what the set-up looked like and couldn’t get anywhere near it. From 49th street to 42nd street and from 6th Avenue to 8th Avenue the entire area was blocked off.
Three garbage trucks formed an impenetrable blockade against all comers on 7th Avenue and every other street had at least one large truck and a police car blocking them. The trucks were all parked at an angle that left a space just wide enough for a single car to fit through. The police cars were parked in front of that opening so that if an authorized vehicle needed to go through, they could just move them to the side, like a door.
Whole infantry divisions-worth of police officers swarmed the area. Nobody was getting in there.
Michael saw an interview with somebody on TV that night who said that if he’d known that’s what it would be like that, he wouldn’t have brought his family here from Texas.
I know that I watch the news more than most. There are plenty of friends in my orbit who do not watch the news at all. They are still, however, aware of what is going on, even if only in the most general sense. I can’t imagine anyone I know who, thinking that at the height of a global pandemic that they might travel somewhere, wouldn’t at least do some basic research to see what to expect.
It was not a secret that holiday celebrations here in the city would be radically different this year from what they had been in years past. Not only was it not a secret, in an effort to keep crowds to as low a level as possible, officials did what they could to let everybody know. Google something as general as New Year’s Eve in Times Square and there it is.
This guy in Texas thought that he’d be able to party as usual on New Year’s Eve with hundreds of thousands of other people as usual, so he gathered up his family and flew up here. He missed the warnings about traveling. He missed the warnings about crowds in the city. He seems to somehow have missed the news that we are in the middle of a global pandemic.
I don’t think he’s alone. If he’s listened to anyone over these last months, it must have been the President. This is what this President has done through his inaction and his cries that the virus is a hoax. Many people clearly believe him. It also seems clear that many people aren’t even questioning him.
Not only will President-elect Biden be faced with having to convince huge parts of our population to take even the most basic precautions to protect themselves, he is also faced with the unfathomable task of actually having to convince huge parts of our population that there is even something that they need to protect themselves against.
The nonsense continues.
A federal judge threw out the baseless lawsuit by Representative Gohmert that was trying to force the Vice President to throw out election results in several key states.
The opportunistic Republican Senator from Missouri , however,is still on track to try and disrupt the election certification on Wednesday.
Tuesday, though, is the day to keep our eye on. The Georgia Senate election run offs are on Tuesday. The results of those two races will determine the entire balance of power in our national government for the next two years. Comparatively, the grandstanding stunt on Wednesday will likely not change anything.
In November, both seats looked as if they were going to go to the Republicans. Now, in January, that doesn’t seem like such a sure bet anymore.
The President’s actions have caused a deep rift within the party. Calls by some Republican officials not to vote because of the baseless spectre of election fraud may actually keep people away. The Senate Majority Leader, by refusing to consider the $2,000 stimulus increase, may also turn some people away from the party.
Will it be enough to cede control to the Democrats? We will see. The GOP is certainly worried.
Yesterday, in one of my big boxes of family papers, I found a copy of a letter that my Grandfather had written to his father in February of 1920. At the time he was attending Law School at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and wrote it from his Fraternity.
In among the general news that he shared, he wrote this: “We had three sad deaths in Lexington yesterday; Mayor Jackson died of heart trouble and pneumonia, Henry Boley’s sister died of influenza, and a Mr. Harper, the jailer, also died of influenza… One of the boys in the house was taken sick yesterday with the influenza but is not very bad off.”
The early part of 1920 saw the final big wave of the Spanish flu pandemic. People, at the time, don’t seem to have been quite as terrified of it as we have been about COVID-19 today. Maybe it’s because there were so many other deadly diseases out there as well. It was just another thing on a very long list.
My elderly aunt does not recall my grandfather ever talking about the pandemic. He lived well into my adulthood, finally dying at a ripe old age, and I don’t remember him ever talking about it either. He told stories and reminisced about everything else, but not that.
I have a lot more boxes to go through, but this is the first time that I have found anything in the family papers that has even referenced it. He was clearly thinking about it as it was happening, but after it past, he seems to have forgotten about it.
Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years have all now slipped into the past. The election was a constant source of anxiety and maybe even terror for weeks if not months and now it is mostly in the past as well.
I think we all harbor a small but nagging fear that something awful is going to happen between now and January 20th. With each passing day, however, it seems more and more unlikely. But, of course, not totally impossible.
Once we are finally past all of it, what of this will we remember?
We all process trauma differently. One of the things that allows us to survive through hardship is our capacity to forget. We might recall that there was pain but can’t really recall the actual pain. For some for whom this has been truly earth-shattering, they may force themselves to forget which will push the memories down but preserve them and allow them to fester.
We may not be able to imagine forgetting this past year, but in time, it will likely slip away.
If I get to be as old as my grandfather, what stories will I tell my nieces’ and nephews’ kids? What stories will I keep repeating that will cause them to giggle and roll their eyes behind my back?
Who knows? History is an ever-moving target.
We’ll have to wait and see.
❤️.....wait! Take the tree down? leaving the Manger? The Three Wise Men are on their way...January 6, expected arrival...bringing Frankincense, Myrrh and Gold! Worth their wait in gold...we can wait and see! 💫🌟