It’s a gray day, but in an impressionist painting kind of way, everything softened in the muting of the sun. The clouds are a study of lights and darks, and maybe, maybe the heat has broken a bit.
This isn’t, by far, the biggest issue to come from this pandemic, or a real issue, or even a problem, but I was set to take an amazing trip this summer, I would have been leaving Friday, and now that is gone. Not gone for now, but gone forever because that kind of trip will never look the same again.
To say it now sounds so strange, it was a cruise, but booked before a cruise became a thing conjuring up confined spaces with endless germs converging. I suppose that was always a risk, but now anything we might not have considered about it is all there in stark relief.
I’ve been on one cruise before, to Alaska, and I meticulously used sanitzer wherever available, determined not to get an infamous stomach bug. But that alone seems futile now.
Beyond that, we aren’t allowed in any of the countries I would have seen, and all the images I had in my head of this incredible experience have converted to people in hospital beds, people being brutalized by nameless military simply for protesting, endless gloom in an endless loop.
That usurper in the White House has stolen so much from us, all as he scooped armfuls of cash straight out of the economy to line his own mattress. People are losing their livelihoods and their homes and their lives.
I know my trip doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things, within the larger picture. But he managed to take that too, and with that, my bright spot, the thing that kept me looking forward.
So that is me for today, sad about something that almost was and can never be. I hope you have a Monday filled with whatever it is you need today.
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