December 31, 2020
It's finally over (all but the champagne, and wow, have we earned it!) Steph and I started watching a New Year's Eve show a little while ago and turned it off. Like this year's surreal Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, with its cartoon kites and Broadway dancers whirling down empty streets, tonight's festivities will just be strange and sad. As crazy as I always think those Times Square revelers are, waiting hours for the ball to drop, this year I'm going to miss them.
Photo: Imran Creator for Unsplash
Instead of TV, we're calling and texting friends and family in the U.S. and overseas. We have a fire going, hot appetizers, drinks, and a candle burning in the holder Stephanie's mother used to pray over in troubled times. It reads "All Shall Be Well." We've had a candle burning it it almost every day this year.
We keep being told we still have months of hardship ahead. Today's headlines alone are gruesome, close to unbelievable. But beyond that lies hope. I imagine how grim tonight would be — not just in the U.S. but all over the world -- if a vaccine hadn't been found.
But it has been. We have two, the U.K. has one, I just heard China has one coming soon. There have been distribution problems here, hopefully fixed soon. We've been promised one hundred million people will be vaccinated in the first 100 days of the new administration. Next year on this night, God willing, we'll be safe, and rejoicing the way we'd like to tonight.
I want to wish everyone a much, much better year in 2021 ,,, starting in less than an hour! I hope our country will heal, that we'll be kinder to each other next year. I hope we stay safe and keep each other safe.
Bless you all.
