12/29/20, Happy 2021!!!

Hi Everyone,

I hope you had a beautiful Christmas and were able to be with your families. My family and I made a brave decision this year, very brave, to follow the guidelines and suggestions not to celebrate together this year. For us, it would have meant all 22 of us getting together, 12 of us flying in and under one roof, 8 households united, arriving from 6 cities in 3 countries. To be together this year would have been flying in the face of wisdom and disregarding all expert medical advice. So we agreed to stay where we were, in smaller units of my children, well within the rules, and in the musical chairs of Covid, I wound up entirely alone. I spent almost all of Christmas Day on Face Time, and Christmas Eve on the phone. And somehow, despite distance and missing each other, we managed to open gifts together, and spend a lot of time together. it’s not the same as being together in the same room, but it was an adequate substitute in the circumstances, and left us all feeling we had spent time with each other, and it was the right decision, even though it was very hard not to be together.

I never do anything very special on New Year’s Eve, so I’m much less sentimental about it than Christmas. Long ago, I used to give big dinner dances when I was married, with an orchestra, and I love to dance. Eventually, we spent quiet evenings at home with popcorn, watching old movies. And once divorced, I gave poker parties on New Year’s Eve that were really fun. And in recent years, I neither give parties on New Year’s Eve nor go to them. They just seem like too much trouble and are usually disappointing, the roads are dangerous, and I’m happy to stay home. Now, in the year of Covid, the whole world is dangerous, and everyone and everything is dangerous wherever you are. So I’m even happier to be at home. But what I long for now is a world where Covid is gone and long forgotten, my loved ones aren’t at risk, I don’t have to remember to wear a mask, or ask my friends what they’ve been doing lately, or panic if I was in contact with someone who came down with it, or get tested regularly. Covid has become a full time part of our daily lives now, and we have to constantly remember to be responsible. It will be wonderful when it will no longer be part of our lives, and I am fervently hoping that 2021 is the year we see it depart, just as 2020 was the year we saw it arrive, and had no idea what was in store for us on New Year’s Day last year, and what lay ahead for us all, with lock downs and curfews, and tragedies over lost loved ones.

So my hope and my prayer for the New Year is that 2021 is the year that Covid will end, that it will disappear into the mists, we can throw our masks away, and not worry if we caught it going to the grocery store or from a friend. Here’s to the end of Covid, and welcome 2021. I hope this is going to be a very, very, very good year. And I wish you happiness, health, peace and prosperity in the coming year. May all your wishes come true in the coming year, and all of our wishes that this will be the year that the Covid 19 virus disappears.

Happy New Year!! Happy 2021!!! Have a beautiful New Year!!!

love, Danielle