Ailantha
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Notes From the Other Side Of New Year's, Or How I Dispensed With My Visions Of Sugarplums

1/3/2021

0 Comments

 

                                 Like the blog?

Picture


​You'll love the books

Picture
"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Buy them on Amazon.

​NOTES FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF NEW YEAR'S, OR HOW I DISPENSED WITH MY VISIONS OF SUGARPLUMS

Picture
         It's January 3, 2021, which means that I've made it through the holidays. 
    Back in June of 2020 my daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren drove from Los Angeles, California to Columbus, Ohio to spend a month with us sheltering in place. (Remember that old directive from the early days of the epidemic?)
Picture
     When the month was up and my daughter and her family left for California in July it was with the plan that they'd return to Columbus again at Christmas time and spend another month. 
        And so the summer passed, the beautiful days of early autumn came and went, the COVID curve that had been flattened over the summer,
Picture
...turned into a soaring graph of Mount Everest as the number of new daily COVID cases soared into the hundreds of thousands.
Picture
    And yet even as the epidemic raged on, visions of sugarplums continued to dance in my head. Yes, the epidemic was getting worse, yes, we all needed to social distance, yes, we needed to stay apart, to stay in our own homes or COVID bubbles, to not travel, and yes, there should be no social or family get-togethers, I understood all of that.
      But that surely didn't mean me not seeing my children and grandchildren at Christmas. It didn't mean we shouldn't drive to Chicago during the holiday season as we did every year to spend a couple of days with our daughter and son-in-law.
Picture
    It didn't mean that my son and his girlfriend couldn't come over on Christmas Day just for a little while, 
Picture
...just for our Christmas morning brunch, nothing more.
Picture
     And the absolutely least thing it meant was that my grandchildren couldn't be here for Christmas. Because, like just about everyone else on the planet, I couldn't imagine Christmas without my family, especially the children. So I didn't imagine it. In my mind the COVID epidemic was real and dangerous and staying sealed in one's bubble was necessary right up until mid-December, at which point my mental calendar was filled in with happy images of ghosts of Christmases past. 
Picture
Picture
Picture
    But as the epidemic continued to proliferate and the numbers of sick, hospitalized, and dead continued to climb, the increased warnings against opening one's home to anyone outside of one's COVID bubble began to infringe on my sugarplum visions.
      That is to say, fringes of thoughts that maybe I shouldn't visit my daughter in Chicago or have anyone else visit me began blowing around the edge of my holiday plans, making me feel uneasy. I'd brush the thoughts away - surely there was no danger in  being with my family, they were careful as can be, they were safe - but then the thoughts would blow right back. And then there was the news article I read that warned that, when it comes to COVID, you can't trust your family. I found myself floundering in a state that teetered back and forth between indecision and denial.
       As it turned out, it was about midway through November when I finally saw the light. 
       I called my daughter in Chicago and asked her when she would like me to come to visit for a few days. She told me not to come. Absolutely not to come. 
       Now, I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise that my daughter would tell me not to come and visit her in Chicago at the height of the COVID epidemic. She's the charge nurse for the COVID Intensive Care Unit at her hospital.  
Picture
      "But...will you be okay?" I asked her. "If I don't come and see you around Christmas?"
       My daughter assured me that she would be perfectly fine if I didn't come and see her. In fact she would be fine not only over the holidays but until whenever the time came that we could safely meet again.    
    It was then, after that talk with my daughter, that I realized that I needed to melt those sugarplums in my head and come to terms with the fact that, not only should I not be traveling to anyone else's house for the holidays this year, nobody else should be traveling or coming over to my house. And once I had made the decision and steeled my resolve, I was able to make the phone calls.
      First I called my son and told him that I wouldn't be having anyone (by "anyone" meaning him) over for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any time until the epidemic was over and it was safe again.
        Now, my son works in research at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus.

Picture
      Which is why I likewise shouldn't have been surprised when he told me that he wasn't intending to come over for Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. 
        "But will you be okay? Not getting together for the holidays?"
         He, too, assured me that he'd be fine. He sounded fine. I felt relived.
        When I called my daughter in Los Angeles to cancel our plans to have her family drive out for Christmas and spend a month, she one hundred percent agreed that they shouldn't come. I didn't ask if they would be all right not spending a month in Ohio during the winter. I had a feeling they would be.  
Picture
​      And so, while I had wanted to see all my family at Christmas time, knowing that my grown children and grandchildren didn't need to be with their mother and grandmother as much as I imagined they did was, in fact, a relief, and led me to the realization that  if we weren't all together for the holidays this year we'd all be all right. 
         And here it is, January 3, and all of us are all right.
         Happy New Year. May you all be all right.   
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    "Hail Mary"
    by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

    Picture
    "Equal And Opposite Reactions"
     by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
    or from
    The Book Loft
    of German Village,
    Columbus, Ohio
    Picture
    Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
    Picture

    Archives

    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    RSS Feed

    I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
    hopefully of interest to my fellow travelers.

    Categories

    All


























































































Proudly powered by Weebly