Trouble on land


When your mother tells you she's glad to be on her way out of this world, it can be disconcerting. In truth, she has no intention of going anywhere. But when she's feeling a little down, my mother reflects on what she's lost rather than what she has.

It's easy to be down right now. COVID-19 hasn't gone away. Protests are ongoing in the name of George Floyd, who died when a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes as the man called out for his mother. The country is on fire, in ways, some say, worse than the tumult of 1968. 

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In better news, NASA shot off the SpaceX rocket at the end of last month, with the first American astronauts on a U.S.-made rocket in a decade hurled into space. It made for a bright spot from earth.

Or maybe not. "Why do they need to send them up there when so many people are hurting down here?" Mom asked.

Valuable question. Terra firma is hardly a happy place these days. Mom's question came at the beginning of a lunch and shopping outing. Trouble was, lunch consisted of fast food eaten in the car. And shopping was not an option, since the line to enter Walmart wrapped around the building.

"We always had so much freedom, to do whatever we wanted," she noted. "Now we can't even go shopping."

But we'll have our freedom again. We'll shop on a whim and eat meals in dining rooms again. And hopefully Mom will delay her "way out" for a time still way off.




    


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