Editorial note: Opinions expressed here are solely those of the blogger
I filled up my car’s gas tank earlier this morning. The meter showed I was only two-thirds empty but that was too close for comfort. Before March 2020, when we began feeling the impact of COVID-19 in the United States, I would wait until the tank was pretty much empty until I stopped at a gas station. But now my mindset is quite different. I have this sense of some impending shortage or crisis that would necessitate me needing a full tank of gas. Of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Things were supposed to be different in 2021 but the first couple of weeks of January have been pretty grim. Our nation’s and state capitols, including St. Paul, right across the Mississippi River from me in Minneapolis, are pretty much under lock and key, in advance of Wednesday’s Presidential inauguration. And there’s a great deal of collective anxiety about the next wave of COVID-19 and availability of vaccines.
On a more micro level, it’s grey and dreary in Minneapolis. Our family is feeling a bit uprooted, having just launched a kitchen remodeling project. But my surroundings, as well as the project, have provided me with perspective and hope for what might be ahead.
Yesterday evening our family went to my father-in-law’s condo to check on things while he is out of town. We brought our dog Astro with us and spent a few hours there, making dinner in the condo’s kitchen. At one point during the afternoon our son Ethan and I took Astro for a walk around the neighborhood. Ethan knew that my wife Wendy and I had actually lived in this particular condo more than 20 years ago, before my in-laws moved in. Ethan, not surprisingly, wanted to know what it was like to live in the condo, be part the neighborhood where the two of us were walking.
The thing is, the more I tried to recall this time in my life, the more hazy it seemed. Fortunately, nothing particularly bad or traumatic happened during this timeframe, but not all it it was great, either. It was just Wendy and me, building our life together, working, spending time with friends, having ups and downs. Just like everyone else. But so much time had passed in the meantime. I found myself laser focused on the present. And perfectly willing to let the past stay the past. It made me realize that cliched expression “this too will pass” is entirely true.
After walking Astro our family had dinner, cleaned up and drove home. Right when we walked into our house I swear it looked different. Not good different. Not bad different. Just different. It took a change in scenery and a look back at the past to see the present in a different light.
Whether it happens this week, or this month, or next, or at some unforeseen point in the future, the other shoe will drop. And we just need to pick it up or leave it where it is, depending on how we’re feeling, and keep walking forward. Like we always seem to do.
shishkabobgirldad 