Snowstorm was a rare touch of normalcy in 2020

 

Thursday’s snowstorm which dumped 10-12 inches in the Attleboro area, depending on where you lived, was a rare touch of normalcy in this most abnormal year of 2020.
Thanks to the storm, residents for one day, or at least a few hours, didn’t have to be worried about being scared out of their minds by their elected officials (thank you Mayor Walsh and Gov. Baker for scolding and lecturing us daily).
No, instead of being subjected to more of what we’ve heard during this endless pandemic – stay home and do nothing even though none of it seems to be mattering or making a damned bit of difference – we had the pleasure of dealing with a lot of snow, something to which there’s a familiar response:
Go outside, clear a path to our houses, clean off our cars, shovel or snow-blow our driveways and start your vehicle and move it so you can clean off and around your parking space.
For a few precious hours, there were no worries about “contact tracing,” staying 6 feet apart from your snow shovel or getting too close to the birds in the backyard trying to find some birdseed that dropped from the tree so they don’t go hungry.
And, for once in 2020, it was perfectly fine to talk to your neighbors,  thank them for snow-blowing behind your cars, noticing when one neighbor used his snowblower to clear the driveway of an elderly neighbor’s house, and to just pretend that life is good a mere eight days before Christmas.
It was also completely kosher to open up a conversation --- an ice-breaker, if you will – with a neighbor about how much snow we got, less than we feared, how neither of us had any complaints about that outcome and how relieved we were to not be in Maine or New Hampshire, where they measured their snow in feet, not inches.
At least for one day, there was a touch of normalcy in our lives --- and how ironic it was that it took a snowstorm to provide that much-welcomed respite from our never-ending pandemic doomsday warnings.
It was, however, very much back to our harsh coronavirus pandemic reality, when a couple of hours later, I got robo calls from a Massachusetts health official on both my land and cellphone lines --- along with a text from the same source --- imploring me to stay home for Christmas. (I wish I could have spoken to that person and said that I already have had a very nice Hanukkah or Chanukah, thank you very much. LOL!)
Don’t get me wrong: I completely understand officials’ concerns and frustrations since thousands in the Bay State and millions nationwide ignored those same pleas not to travel during Thanksgiving and are expected to ignore them again for Christmas – despite the raging surges of virus cases here and across the nation.
But please, dear state officials, who evidently care far more about metrics than about people --- can you please cool it on the overkill?
Please be aware that the vast majority of hard-working residents who have been struggling with living lives of isolation and virtual purgatory for nearly 10 months while following a set of confusing and incredibly inconsistent COVID-19 rules and regulations now are at the edge of their patience before we all have nervous breakdowns.
And, God forbid if and when that happens, because we know that NO HELP will be available in a country that continues to put mental health well down on its misplaced list of priorities, only paying lip service to it.
Yes, those of us who have been religiously obeying the rules DO CARE about the overburdened medical and health care people, but can you PLEASE get the message that we are on the verge of checking out after giving up friends, hugs, handshakes and EVERYTHING HUMAN for so long now.
At least consider our very real feelings before you blast us and lock us all down again.
God help us all!