I was still here one year ago. I was still here and hadn’t left yet. One year ago there were murmurings abroad and murmurings within of something unsure , but mostly life was set.
March started off cold with an ever-extended spring break that lasted well past spring and into Summer. March 22 was our first online worship service at church where the Dunbars plus the booth volunteers broadcast church out to the homes of worshipers near and far. The spring came in to full bloom while we all kept our distance and ate breakfast burritos we bought from a catering company in York as our grocery bill soared.
By Memorial Day we went back to in-person limited worship, by June we had a family only confirmation service for the 8th graders and then a drive-by graduation appreciation and a few receptions.
By late June we decided to hit the road and head west. We figured camping and the outdoors were safe and we got our first taste of masks and mask mandates from state to state. Before that we were never anywhere the mask thing was still foggy so we had little practice doing it. We saw Sequoias before they burned, we walked among those giants in innocense before that burned up too.
By July the boys headed into field work under a new regimen of temperature checks, hand sanitizer, distancing and masks and by August it was decided how our schools would open.
By August the football team was playing under Friday Night Lights while the pep band sat behind the endzone distanced and playing from afar, the band and choir concerts moved to the gymnasium for more space and the crowds were ushered out between performances to “fog” the building.
I can’t remember when I was saddest. Was it March at the fall of everything? Maybe. Was it when Sam was in quarantine for his winter concert and the beginning of the crumbling of his final school memories commenced? Was it in November to observe how far we’d fallen collectively in spirit and in trust from the naive human kindness we once practiced so freely? Was it in November and December when the holidays came and went in this living room where we gathered only the five of us again?
Was I saddest at the turn of the New Year afraid to hope that we’d ever recover? Or is it now, twelve months later looking back on shifting sand under the shadow of a doubt, how good we’ve had it compared to most and evenso the loss I feel?
One boy turned 15 in September, another turns eighteen today. My youngest will be 14 in April and last night admitted to not remembering March-May from last year.
The lesson has been joy in sorrow. The lesson has been holding both. The lesson has been written down, talked about, lifted up to heaven, buried in the earth, shared in laughter and in losing and in everything in between. I wouldn’t have weathered the year so well without Leah, Marci, Erica, Anna, Zoe, Betsy, Genevieve, My Linh, Lisa, Lisa, Peter, Bob, Tim, Louise, Wendy, Jim, Briand, Django, Byron, David, Rachel, Christopher, Libby, Jon, Sam, Jesse, Joey, Jami, Emily, Brian, Michael, Jeni, Liz, Tim, Eric, and so many more.
One year later, we can’t go back. One year later living into the future is more important than ever. One year ago I was still here. One year later I am still here.
That’s pretty much it. That’s the blog.