Almost Home

Angela Blanchard is an ALF Houston Senior Fellow, Class XVIII. She is the President Emeritus of BakerRipley. 

Over the last few months, waves of losses have rolled through our region, large companies laying off thousands and small businesses laying off family and closing doors. Anxious health care professionals and broken-hearted family members recited daily caution and “red alert” reminders.

We’ve tried to hold socially distanced funerals and attempted to keep our spirits up on zoom. We’ve struggled to maintain rituals of gratitude and appreciation while scanning for symptoms of illness. Trying to keep it all together while marching and voting. Each day scrounging up the motivation to meet our responsibilities and obligations. Knowing whatever our losses, there were neighbors faring worse, facing eviction or planning memorials.

Hoping for a vaccine and considerate neighbors, we did the things we were asked to do. We tried to figure out who to trust and what to believe. Even the people we trusted, those who knew the most, got it wrong a couple of times and we had to remind ourselves: global pandemic. No one alive had ever led during a global pandemic. Small errors were made alongside devastating mistakes.

Most of us accepted our own limited capacity and understanding of this predicament. We did not whine. (Often). We did not rage. While we struggled, we still reached out. Even when reaching out meant not touching.

We saw our mom and didn’t hug her. It really hurt.

We waved through windows while we tried to figure out how to live on this human touch starvation diet.

We are almost home. Though we are changed forever by this pandemic, though it is big enough to have redefined culture, markets, value, work, community, still our Human Spirit is not extinguished.

We love, still, with tenderness and fierceness. And, as soon as we can,  with wild abandon. And I project with more than a bit of wantoness. I hope we hold a festival of loves and hugs and wild dancing in the streets.

We are worth it.

Wrote this for me. And maybe for you too, you sweet, kind, loving, stumbling, striving in earnest, human being.  You. 🧡