It's Dark Outside

 Let's cut to the chase: I am thankful to be alive. Thankful not to be part of the more than five million souls who have passed on because of the pandemic that has shaped and reshaped our lives for the past two Thanksgivings. 

I am thankful that my friends and family have made this same journey essentially unscathed. I am glad that the suffering most of us have experienced has been one of inconvenience and anxiety. Not respirators and hospital rooms.

I am thankful that science has mapped a path out of this mess. I am relieved to live in a time and a place where we live not with miracles but solutions to problems that give us hope and a chance to see another Thanksgiving. 

I am thankful for the people who have devoted their lives to controlling and healing all the ways that this disease has pushed us all to the brink. These are the heroes and the saviors, the ones who worked to exhaustion for days at a time and then got up and did it again.

I am thankful for the windows opened onto the world, allowing me the chance to stay in touch with all of those who have waited patiently for this storm to pass. In their homes. I am happy to have had the chance to watch and listen while they connect with me in ways that they can. 

I am thankful for this additional chance. A chance to keep breathing. A chance to keep moving about carefully without stirring up the clouds of pestilence that lurk about everywhere. I am grateful that I have evolved to a point where wearing a strip of cloth across my face is ticket to my freedom and not a limit to it. 

I am thankful for another day.