Geez.
When I was a teenage girl, I used to go body surfing. Every summer my friends and I would don our bikinis and hit the water. Body surfing was fun. We would time, catch and ride the waves, surfing without equipment. I remember hanging out in pods of fellow enthusiasts, waiting to catch the swells. We would talk about the sets, how the waves were coming- usually in threes- but sometimes fives. We would time them together and take off on a glorious ride.
Until one summer.
For some reason the tides were strong or my timing was off but in the middle of the day i got SLAMMED by the first wave, pushing me down to the ocean floor. I remember remembering not to struggle but to relax until I felt the wave pass over me so I could rise to the surface. Unfortunately, there was another wave behind it and I repeated the cycle. I came up the third time and motioned to my buddy to get me to shore, She grabbed my wrist and dragged me out.
I stopped surfing that summer and have never really found the joy in body surfing, although I have been back in the water at least once since then.
This year is kind of like those waves. Every time We surface, another one slams into us. ENOUGH already.
This afternoon, I learned that a long time friend had died. Trina was a friend from High School and we reconnected via Facebook. She was always posting something political or photo-memes of a dog named ( I think) Norbert. She had a marvelous sense of humor and a great heart. She also had Diabetes. We can't even gather together in her memory, to hug each other tight and honor who she was in our lives. F-YOU Pandemic.
We keep saying we need to be done with 2020, but the yearend is not like some journey that finishes just because of the tick of the clock or the flip of a calendar page, even if we wanted it to be. I think of this year as if Fate is having a ginormous yard sale and every horrid thing she has is being flung on the lawn. I hope that her garage of awful is empty soon and we can get on to better things.
Hug your friends, even if it's virtual. If you are reading this, consider yourself hugged.
