Looking back to the start of a marker year like 2020, none of us knew what was ahead and none us had ever heard of social distancing.
It’s the first of May, a time when we usually are looking forward to high school and college graduations, lots of weddings, and making plans for Memorial Day outings and preparing for summer road trips, vacations and airline travel to far off places.
So now here we all are on May 1st with an official and mandatory order starting today countywide to wear a face mask or face covering if we’re out in public and within six feet of someone besides the people we live with.
But May 1st also means we are now getting closer to some easing of the nearly two full month order to stay at home, hopefully in the not too socially distant future. We have endured toilet paper shortages, hoarding of food productions, long lines at crowded supermarkets.
Many have endured and are still enduring being out of work, with hundreds of thousands in San Diego County filing for unemployment they thought they’d never need. Hundreds of other thousands are still working from home, and week and after week, confronting the challenges of doing so.
Yet during these almost two months, we also have had time to think a lot more about our lives before this long pandemic all began. And to confront the fact that we’ve maybe taken life for granted and maybe always had too much we don’t really need or have wasted a lot of what we do need.
In other words, in this new month, that in San Diego we often refer to as May Gray, things may be brighter than we think...and getting brighter.
(Photo credit c.e. albert)