“… we found the power to author a new chapter
To hope and laugh…”– Inauguration poet Amanda Gorman
Papa Bob rose early to catch the inauguration events. The wreath laying at Arlington was the most moving for him. “This is good to do,” he said. “It’s important to remember.” I don’t think he knew he was echoing Vice President Kamala Harris, but this they have in common.
“Didn’t you love the young poet?” My friend Beth said as we walked in a new dawn. (The inauguration began while I pedaled the bike in the house before 7am.) Then we saw two more friends and they flashed big smiles. For the change in the weather and the change in the world.
The beach is our social life these days, but that too will change, as so many people in Haines now have had at least one shot of the Covid-19 vaccine. I was part of Friday’s vaccine clinic. So were Chip and our daughters and their spouses. 600 of us in two days. The SEARHC Haines Health Center had enough for – as one staff member told me- everyone in town that wanted one. Even the heavy rains and gales of the last few days couldn’t douse my relief, gratitude and hope.
Although it was hard to sleep. Who can not worry about more landslides and floods? Then came the news that the Beach Road slide slipped a little bit more. It was quite small, the evening news reported, a little chunk off the side of the big slide. But still. I’m so glad the rain quit.
Anyway– This morning, after we four beach walkers (and four dogs) split and then continued on our seperate ways for about a half hour, we met again. Blue sky had pushed some of the clouds aside. They waved up at us from across the tidal flats. Then Ellen, a retired teacher walking off her new hip surgery, or maybe it was a knee, stopped and shouted “Geraldine Ferraro!”
We laughed.
“Remember her?” Ellen said, and answered herself. “I’ll never forget her.”
I love this place.
