Leaving 2020 Far Far Behind.
2021 had better be a Helluva Year.
It’s New Year’s Eve and it didn’t come soon enough.
You too?
Man, what a year!
I haven’t worn real Going-to-Town clothes since way last winter. If there’s a good thing in all of this, I have lost at least 10 pounds since March. I needed that! But my sloppy clothes are fitting even sloppier now. Not that anyone cares.
I’ve been cutting my own hair, which sometimes used to be okay, but my right arm, the one where the lymph nodes were removed, no longer wants to spend much time up in the air, so I have to rush through it and it shows. I dread the day I’m sitting in a real beautician’s chair trying to explain why my haircut is such a disaster. I can’t even pretend someone else did it.
We haven’t seen our youngest daughter in more than a year. I hate that! We had no Christmas to speak of, having spent it in a motel room 300 miles away from all of them while my husband, Ed, was recovering from bladder cancer surgery the day before Christmas Eve.
Yes, that happened in the year we’ll be talking about until the end of our days. (More to come.)
Several members of our family contracted COVID, but thankfully they all survived it. Some are still feeling the effects, and may for a while yet. Nothing in 2020 is ever for sure.
And then there’s Trump, still pretending he won the election, as if there was any doubt who won the election. (Joe Biden won the election, Donald. Now pack up and get out of there. You big baby.)
But about Ed and his bladder cancer: What a scare that was! The discovery came out of a routine end-of-year blood test, with a better study to follow, then a cat scan, then the diagnosis and the surgery—all within less than two weeks. I’m reasonably sure none of it would have happened that quickly if we’d been in the city—and if there’s anything to be thankful for, it’s that.
We got the pathology report yesterday and the good surgeon appears to have got it all. He’ll be checked again in about three months, but everything looks good right now. He has a stent between his bladder and his kidney that will stay in until spring, when we return to Michigan’s Up North region. (Which, by the way, may be the best place in the country to have surgery these days. The small hospital in St. Ignace was nearly empty, and as far as I know, there were no COVID cases there. The staff was not overwhelmed and the care there was just remarkable.)
We’re at our daughter’s near Michigan’s southern border and will be leaving in a day or two to head south for the winter. We debated about going from the frigid but safer north to the warmer but more COVID-friendly south, but the thought of upper Michigan’s short days and icy isolation fills us with more dread than the remote prospect of running into someone who might breathe COVID on us.
We think we can be careful enough, and we know the building staff where we stay is scrupulous about cleanliness, sanitation, and distancing. Once we get into our own apartment we can barricade just as well as we did in our cabin in the woods. And when we do go outdoors we can stay far away from other people and we won’t be shivering or sliding on the ice.
I don’t seriously believe 2021 will bring a miraculous end to all of our misery. Nobody really thinks that. But come January 20 the experts and the good guys will be in charge. They’ll be working for US. For all of us. And most of us will be doing what we need to do to help them. We’ll be better together.
So Happy New Year to all of you. The year ahead will be full of challenges, but joy is where we find it. We just have to look.