I know every time comes with it’s own troubles. I know many other times were much more demanding of it’s people’s. One thing that has always intrigued me about history was how the people felt at any particular time I might be studying. With this in mind, I hope in some small and insignificant way I can continue to tell my covid story. I am now firmly in the vaccinated camp, but as a Libertarian I have no compulsion to impose my will on others. I consider us to be in the second wave of a virus that has mutated. We have been told with great certainty by experts in their field things that months, and sometimes weeks later, they recanted… all the while pushing their new ideas as science, and above question. But beyond all of the politics of all of this are families, and fear, and isolation, and depression, and suffering. And suicide. And running parallel to all this is our everyday lives, and the struggles day to day living provide. So just about the time for a new school year, and as I am preparing to move to Florida from Kentucky, a new variant of this damn virus is raging through our country, and seems to be on the verge of possibly shutting our schools down again. Time will tell if that happens. It seems to be everywhere. Anyway, I said all that, to say this….

We are heading to Florida this Sunday, and one of my son in laws offered to drive a vehicles there for me. The only problem with this plan was that all my family except my mom and one of my sisters live in Tennessee. All three of my daughters live in or around Knoxville. To get the car in position for the move requires a five hour trip to get there and normally we would spend a day or two visiting, but here’s the thing…

In one household, daughter number one has covid, and maybe our granddaughter, daughter number two told me my two grandsons has covid and, and daughter number three was waiting for her test to come back. The plan evolved into simply dropping the car off and run back to Kentucky, and trying to stay covid free. For now. This thing will eventually make us all run the gauntlet, I’m just trying to get to the Sunshine State.

My wife had a great idea… make the grandkids a care basket. Maybe it would pick their spirits up a little! So off we go to Walmart and we put their bags of goodies together and off we go to drop off the car and leave some cheer!

We pull into the driveway where we are leaving the car and got out, and the grandsons and daughter and son in law were standing behind the storm door as we dropped off the treats, and they were waving, and it hit me…

This was just another tragic thing, in a year filled with tragic things, and at a time when I should have been happy that they were well enough to be standing in the doorway waving at Mimi and Big Daddy, all I wanted to do was hug them and tell them that I loved them. And it just seemed sad and surreal. And overwhelming. So we both waved and drove away.

From there we drove over to leave a package for our granddaughter and see our daughter who has covid, and the scene there was equally sad and equally surreal. We waved and said I love you, left some goodies and drove away.

I won’t compare this hardship with hardships from other times. I am sure those times could fill pages, but this is my story, and there should be a record, an honest record of what it’s like to go through something serious enough to shut the worlds economy down, and restart those economies, and possibly shut them down again. To tell about the trillions of dollars printed with nothing to back them, to hand that money out to people so they can sit at home. And find ourselves in as bad a shape a year and a half later, and wonder if the free money is about to crank up again. And wonder how much more families can absorb. It feels like frightening times sometimes, and I wonder how other generations would handle things today. I suspect that it would be a lot like we are handling it. I suppose they would just pray for the strength to endure.

God bless us all.

ws