Second Pandemic Birthday

Today my mom joins many of us in having a second pandemic birthday. We are all grateful to have been vaccinated, some of us several months ago, and slowly, gradually we started to see each other again. This has been hard on each and every one of us, and most of all young school aged children (and their parents), but followed closely by the very old, which is where my mother lies on the lifetime spectrum. I am very proud of both she and my father for how completely they followed the COVID guidelines, getting groceries delivered in, and not seeing any of us without a mask for over a year. We did arrange to have their great grandchildren play on their front lawn a few times when weather permitted, but it didn't happen very often and it certainly wasn't the same as sharing a meal with them. The thing about it is that their time is likely to be the most limited of any of us, so that year plus represents a piece of the time they have left. Why does that matter so much to me? We all treated them like this was very important, that we stay apart in order to all survive this, but so many people did not care about that at all. And in Iowa, our government cared the least of all. There was no protection from them for the most vulnerable of all, saying that people would "do the right thing". Well, if that were true we really wouldn't need the police at all. The governor should be first in line to defund the police, but of course she is not. She just doesn't care at all for the very old, and she isn't crazy about the rest of us either. Despite that, we made it.