December 2, 2020
As we continue to travel down
this path of uncertainty that is the year 2020, many of us find ourselves
discovering who we are underneath the layers of the minutia that became our
lives during the relatively good times of the last few years.
I hear a lot of people saying
how weary they are of this whole “pandemic thing”, and how they just don’t want
to do it anymore. They want to get back to normal. The foot stomp is, of
course, implied.
People who say words to that effect
clearly have never had to endure much hardship in their lives. The one thing
that going through tough times teaches you is that you have to persevere until
the hard times leave again. And yes, they always leave again.
In our earliest years as a
couple, we went through huge tracts of time when David was out of work. Now, I
know I didn’t say out loud, “I’m sick of having to do without. I am so done
with this.” I likely thought it, but I wouldn’t have said it aloud, because
even I knew, as a young mother, that the hard times would be played out and
there really wasn’t much I could do about it except endure.
That is not to say we suffered
in silence and did nothing. We supplemented.
David worked at clearing driveways in the winter, he cut wood in the fall,
thanks to the generosity of a neighbor who said we could take from his bush
what we needed to heat our house. In the spring and summer, we drove around
looking for cast away beer bottles. In those years, when drinking and driving
was an activity many participated in, there were plenty of bottles to be had.
We often put bread and milk on the table from the coins earned turning those empties
in. We never sat back and did nothing. But whether or not you can land a job
isn’t up to you alone. David always looked for work. And then one day, that
neighbor who had offered us all that free wood, hired him. He also owned the
quarry, you see, and had watched with his own eyes how hard David worked even
without a paycheck. That was, incidentally, the last time David was ever
permanently out of a job. There were a few seasonal lay-offs in his first years
with the quarry, but that is another story.
Now I can say that I feel blessed
having acquired my tolerance of tough times through the innocuous years of
simply going without material things. I could have had a bit of a hissy fit and
stomped my feet and said I refuse to believe it….and in the end my wallet would
still have been empty and my cupboards perilously close to bare. And, with that
kind of attitude, my state of mind would have been in a deep hole, and that’s
not good for anyone.
In 2020 if someone has a hissy
fit and decides to go maskless, to congregate with others who feel the same,
the end result might not be as harmless as an empty wallet and hungry belly. The
experts are worried that the rash of Thanksgiving travel in the week just
passed will result, two weeks down the line, in another, and worse upsurge in
cases of the virus. And then a week or so after that, hospitals will be
completely overwhelmed with patients. And then a week or so after that, there
will be even more refrigerated trucks in use as temporary morgues.
I can’t not think about this.
Look, I know you’re tired of all this, but you’ve got to hang on. Hang in
there. Vaccines are coming. Relief is coming. You just have to keep on keeping
on. The truth is that people are going to die because other people can’t be
bothered to wear their damn masks. To save lives, all you have to do is hang
on, and wear the damn mask.
For those you know who claim the
pandemic was all a hoax to get rid of Trump? He’s on the way out now—he really
is—and the pandemic is still here. Oh, and if those you know are arrogant
enough to believe that it is all a conspiracy against them, and their dear
leader who really and truly is on the way out…please ask them, for me, if they
really believe the entire world is in on it?
In Iraq where their legislature
was gathered on the weekend just passed and pictures of it televised, they were
chanting death to America and they were burning colored posters they’d clearly
created for the purpose, posters with pictures of Trump on top and Biden on the
bottom. The legislature, the people in the street doing all this chanting and
burning? They were all wearing face masks. I doubt the Iraqis would be in on a
hoax on the side of any Americans, even if they don’t care for Trump.
To those that you, dear
reader, know who are still in denial, tell them Morgan said: deny it in your
quiet thoughts if you must, but please, please wear your damn mask!
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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