On November 8, 2020, I tuned into our favorite radio station in south Florida and Christmas music popped on. I began to reach for the dial, in disgust at the early commercialism, but instead began singing. That's right - I was singing to Christmas music in early November.
I needed to feel good again, to exhale, to take the stress off my sleep-deprived brain, to erase the relentless, rabid, targeted tweets of 2020 and SING about the time of year that cocoons me like a warm, fuzzy comforter.
The U.S. had reached a total of 10,000,000 Covid infections. Nearly 240,000 had died. One hundred thousand small businesses had closed since the start of the pandemic. President Trump wasn't conceding the election so that President-elect Biden could begin the transition process, despite Biden's winning enough popular votes (discounting those still being counted) to give him more than the necessary 270 in the electoral college and no evidence of fraud in any state.
I'd barely written anything new in the spring and summer of 2020...I just wasn't motivated. We weren't socializing, we certainly weren't traveling, and we hardly left the house except to exercise. I managed a few humorous blogs and posted some friends' travel stories, while diving into books, cooking, and gardening.
In late October we drove 1500 miles from Massachusetts to Florida to vote in the Presidential election, aware that Florida traditionally went to the Republicans. It did again. We paid $109 each for Covid tests (both negative) so that we could unpack. Our air-conditioning went out in 85-degree temperatures the first night we arrived. Two plumbing items had to be replaced and an outdoor electric storm shutter was stuck. A week later, Tropical Storm Eta hit with 55 mph winds and slashing rains.
Of all the tragedies emerging, a generation of children teaching themselves on sofas and mattresses had the potential to become the most devastating. Researchers at Brown University projected in May, 2020, that students would return in the fall, 2020, with approximately two-thirds of the reading gains relative to a regular school year and about one-third to one-half of the learning gains in math. (NY Times, Nov. 8, 2020, Ginia Bellafante, "The Pandemic Widens the Learning Gap," p. 29.)
Still, I sang! I sang off-tune and hummed the words I'd forgotten because I was blessed to have a husband of 55 years who still loved me; because our family enjoyed good health and wasn't devastated by the Covid virus, as so many hundreds of thousands had been; because we had retirement funds and weren't stressed about our living quarters or our food supply; because we had a support system of relatives and friends who enriched us in innumerable ways; because our family had never been forcefully separated or racially attacked.
And I wasn't the only one singing. On November 8th, multitudes in protective masks poured from their doors to chant, to sing, to pop champagne. Our nation would need time to accept, to lessen the rancor, to coalesce, to change the systemic ills, to heal. Meanwhile, I listened to Christmas music and sang. I wondered how many others were singing, too.
