The Year Ends As It Began
What will 2022 bring?
Last year at this time, we were finishing up nearly-a-year of pandemic. So many things had been canceled, closed, postponed. We celebrated a quiet Christmas with just my mother-in-law, who was staying with us — she had basically moved in after there was a covid case in her senior community.
Last year at this time, we’d been through quite a year, but there was hope in the winds: not one but two mRNA vaccines were showing great promise! They were being fast-tracked toward emergency-use approval, and more research was underway. Soon, we thought, we’d be able to get vaccinated and then the world would open up again!
Last year at this time, there were even some promising signs in the political arena here in the U.S., though things were still a bit uncertain.
Well…now it’s a year later. We got vaccinated (yay!), and even boosted. The world opened up, a bit. Then delta happened, and now omicron. Everything’s shutting back down. We celebrated Christmas with my mother-in-law, and also my brother-in-law, here from Idaho, who we had not seen in two years. (We took precautions, and he tested negative twice; we remain hopeful that this will not turn out to have been a terrible idea.)
There are even some promising signs in the political arena, though things are still rather…
