2022

In the frost we created, I set the dinner table. I was using my grandma’s fine China we inherited when she passed away last year, in 2021.

There wasn’t much to eat.

But I saw that there was, anyway. Like in that movie, A Little Princess.

I heard my parents.

They were sitting next to me, laughing and talking about my school day, and how their day at work went.

But, really, we were just sitting there, trying to pretend we were full.

I smelled the rich, smoky turkey. I inhaled the thick, smooth homemade gravy.

I ate three slices of pumpkin pie with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream. My dad gave me some espresso even though mom said no.

All the while, we were just eating heated canned foods. Nothing fresh. Fresh foods were so rare now. And no, we weren’t really laughing. And I wasn’t just coming from school.

And my parents had not come home from work.

Everyone stayed home all day.

Everyday.

My parents had just been fighting downstairs in the basement over the gasoline shortage.

“What shortage? Martha, are you daft? There is no gas left! You can’t go fill up anywhere!” My dad yelled from downstairs. The echo reverberated all throughout the house. My heart is shaking. I take in a deep breath.

I could hear everything as I felt the heavy China clunk on the wooden dining table.

My dad doesn’t watch the news anymore. He says it’s bad for our mental wellness. He says we need to go outside more.

But what is there to do? What’s a safe activity?

With all the variants of COVID-19 out there, which one is the one that is killing off everyone?

It’s 2022. It’s almost Christmas.

And we are all trapped together inside liked caged animals—-with less and less excuses to be hopeful that things will get better.

Last year, in late summer, things seemed to be getting so much better. With the vaccines and people going out again, I felt like I could breathe.

But, once it was fall and winter again, there was talks on the news of a variant that was much more infectious.

And much more deadly.

Food became scarce.

Gasoline dried up by mid 2022. People hoarded and hoarded until it almost became a felony to keep a certain amount of gasoline at a time stored for personal use, or food, or any goods that seemed for longer than for three months at a time.

I just wanted to go to school.

I just wanted to see my friends.

Now I only look at a screen.

24/7.

My mom gave me an early Christmas gift. We were not having any family get togethers at all this year. Not next year either, probably.

My mom gave me my grandmother’s blue heart locket. It has silver on the inside and a diamond in the middle.

“She wanted you to have it. You were her only granddaughter, Freyja. She loved you so much,” My mother said with a teary eyed expression. “I wish we could have been there at the hospital…”

She can’t finish her words. It’s too hard. Her mother and my grandmother died all alone, because no one was allowed in the room with her. In a hospital—-like so many others—-and because of one of those horrible viruses.

We are all sitting at the dinner table. My dad thinks it is nice I used my grandmother’s China for us to eat the canned food. It helps keep things in the right spirit. I tell my dad I love him. He looks down and cries, saying, “I love you, too, baby Bumblebee.”

He always calls me that. My mom smiles.

We are running low on lots of things. But not love.

But, we still need things.

I look outside the window. It’s storming outside.

I pretend that the storm is me.

I carry my mother and father away from this world and we go somewhere new.

Far, far away. Like in Star Wars.

And I am wind swept, but not broken.

Humanity isn’t broken, either.

We are the storm, if we band together.

If we stick together.

I close my eyes and try to remember what a birthday party feels like—-what it sounds like—-and though I still get to eat cake, what it’s like to share it with all my friends. I touch my silver bracelet with the charms on it. There is one charm I absolutely love, the golden pear tree charm.

My dad got it for me. He told me a pear can mean many things. He told me that in ancient China, pears meant immortality and prosperity—-mainly because pear trees lived a long time.

In Korea, the pear symbolizes grace and nobility or comfort. In many Korean legends, the pear gives women fertility.

To him, I was a little honey bee that created the flowering fruit that made the beautiful pear grow. And he said pears were his favorite fruit, after all.

I open my eyes and see my parents.

“What’s on your mind, honey?” My mom asks.

I imagined myself waking up tomorrow to a beautiful, ornate, gorgeous feast—-with colorful curtains and new clothes draped over my tired frame. Like a Princess.

“Just thinking about how lucky I am to have you two,” I answer. And I am. I’m nine years old, and some kids my age have lost their parents to all the different variants of Covid-19.

My parents smile and we clean up afterwards.

A plate accidentally falls and breaks.

My dad cleans it up and says, making us all almost feel a tiny bit braver, “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

My mom takes his hand, and then mine.

I feel our whirlwind of emotions combine,

I am winter.

My dad, spring.

My mom, fall.

I hold onto my grandmother’s blue heart locket,

And I feel the strength of my soul rising…

The winds of this year

almost caught me,

It almost snatched me up,

But with my family

I am the storm,

I am the wind.

Fin.

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Author note: George B. Shaw is credited for the quote at the end, “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

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Thanks, Melissa