Saying Farewell to 2021, the Year of the Meat-Grinder
After another year that failed to provide relief, how can we muster hope for the next new year?
Humans are funny about the promise of a new year. I keep chuckling to myself remembering all those stories and memes celebrating the end of 2019, what many described then as literally, the worst year of my life. Oh, 2020 was going to be so awesome! For those who had been willing away time under the perpetual chaos of the Trump news cycle, the finish line was in sight. It was to be a year of change and promise. We’d have a chance to make America kinder, saner, again.
Most of us don’t wager on a global pandemic while making our new year’s resolutions. Lockdowns, mask fights, surprise homeschooling (while simultaneously working from home, if lucky enough to still be employed), ignorance and fear over which surfaces COVID could survive and transmit, quarantine, death, a presidential election that just would not end, and finally the hope of a vaccine. 2020 turned out to be a mess.
I was watching Jingle Jangle with my family in December 2020, trying to make a holiday separate from extended family seem normal, when my husband read to me from his phone that the first federally approved COVID vaccines were being shipped out across the country. As our kids…
