Recuperating from the Holidays

Ylanite Koppens / Pexels

I always find it a bit sad that Jack's birthday celebration is followed so quickly by New Years. I find myself wondering whether he felt the same way, his birthday being sandwiched between Christmas and New Years, as it was. Was everyone too busy setting off firecrackers to help him blow out the candles on his cake? I hope not.

Birthdays are special, marking our entrance into this world and giving us a moment when we can feel that we're important. Especially when we are young, we feel as though no one else has a day as special as we do. As we get older, we are happy to learn that someone we like shares our birthdate. Al Harrington (Ben Kokua) and I were both born on December 12th. I like that. At least, we had the benefit of our birthday falling two weeks before the Christmas-to-New Years melee. No, we weren't Capricorn Goats, although I understand Sagittarians can be pretty stubborn, too.

Now, the last gift has been unwrapped, and the last firecracker has been set off. Now, we step cautiously into this new year, praying that it will be better than the past two years were. We pray that that darn virus will meet its match at the hands of the virologists who managed to develop a vaccine in less than a year. We pray that those who lost their jobs and homes and are being forced to live in their cars and cargo vans and eke out their livelihoods on temporary assignments will be able to retake their rightful places in society. We pray that the hurt and disappointment of those two years won't cause our world to splinter into too many pieces to repair.

As Jill Jackson-Miller and Sy Miller wrote in 1955, "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me."