Here in the Orwellian gulag that is Woke New England even family gatherings are a fatal thought-crime punishable by whatever means is imagined most effective at discouraging the proles from following so sinful an example.\u00a0 And mothers of young children are the easiest to frighten into following whatever bizarre and depressing rules are forced upon them.<\/p>\n
And so, throughout this sad exercise in government overreach my grandchildren have for the most part been held away from me and Camera Girl by their parents mostly out of fear for our health.\u00a0 And no grandfather is foolish enough to argue with his daughter when she is concerned about the health of her children.\u00a0 All you can say is, \u201cDo what you think is best for the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
But yesterday was a great day, a turning of the tide.\u00a0 My daughter and my son-in-law brought over our grandsons for a barbecue and games in the yard.\u00a0 No masks, no distancing, no nothing.\u00a0 Camera Girl outdid herself with wonderful food that we enjoyed on the porch with badminton and other outdoor pursuits.\u00a0 The four boys immediately reverted to true form and scuffled and bickered about every interaction.\u00a0 It was glorious.\u00a0 Even the weather was cooperative.\u00a0 It was overcast and the temperature hovered around 75 degrees which meant no swimming pool but just the perfect temperature for me to participate in sporting activity without breaking a sweat.\u00a0 And that allowed me to spend the maximum time with the kids instead of the adults.\u00a0 Perfect.<\/p>\n
I got to talk with my oldest grandson about his sophomore high school curriculum and offer help with chemistry and math if he needed it.\u00a0 I talked to his brother about his eighth-grade classes and his sports interests.\u00a0 \u00a0And with the two younger guys I just talked dinosaurs and toys.\u00a0 Apparently, T. rex still reigns supreme with the four-year-old although opened up an alternative category for herbivores and awarded it to Diplodocus.<\/p>\n
I also got to talk to my daughter and son-in-law about how they were keeping these housebound boys busy this summer and was impressed by their ingenuity and energy.\u00a0 I will confess I wouldn\u2019t have had the stamina.\u00a0 And it did my heart good to see Camera Girl laughing and playing with her younger grandsons and indulging all of their food requests up to and including various ice cream products that are forbidden to me!\u00a0 I could tell that she was reveling in this socializing just as much as I was.<\/p>\n
When they finally went home after a full day of fun, we cleaned up the wreckage of the gathering and traded favorite moments and observations on how much the boys had grown.\u00a0 And it was then that I realized what an empty world this crazy quarantine has created.\u00a0 What they say about not knowing what you have until it\u2019s gone was made blindingly clear yesterday.<\/p>\n
So, forgive this long rambling preamble into my domestic situation.\u00a0 The point of this essay is acknowledging the real damage that isolating family members does and a philosophical question on quality of life.\u00a0 If you are a grandparent being shut out of your grandchildren\u2019s lives is a depressing and painful thing.\u00a0 If children\u2019s educations are interrupted that is a dangerous loss to our whole society.<\/p>\n
Formerly we always placed the welfare of children before everything else.\u00a0 If you are a grandparent how much of your grandchildren\u2019s lives are you willing to waste to slightly increase your own odds of living?\u00a0 Now admittedly I\u2019m not the highest risk of dying from COVID-19.\u00a0 I\u2019m at the beginning of the age demographic affected but my health is reasonably robust.\u00a0 So maybe this thing isn\u2019t real enough to me make me afraid.\u00a0 On the other hand, someone in our family died of the virus and another person needed hospital care and cutting-edge medicine to survive it.\u00a0 So maybe I am aware of the stakes.<\/p>\n
From my point of view, I would say the children ought to be allowed to go to school.\u00a0 If there are teachers who are at risk, they should be retired, at least temporarily, at attractive financial terms and let the kids get on with their lives.\u00a0 The people at greatest risk from all this are the elderly and the chronically ill who live in homes with school age children.\u00a0 Let the doctors figure out the best way to protect these people and let everyone else get back to normal life.<\/p>\n
Saving the sick and elderly is a laudable humanitarian goal.\u00a0 But what can you say about a society that sacrifices the precious youth of a generation to marginally advantage the life span of the very old?\u00a0 Do we duck and cover every year during flu season?\u00a0 After all, the same elderly population is the one that accounts for 90% of the tens of thousands of flu deaths that occur every year in the United States alone.\u00a0 Are we denying that people, especially the very frail and sick will die eventually?\u00a0 Have we lost all sense of proportion?\u00a0 And does that mean grandmothers and great grandmothers have forfeited permanently the right to hug and kiss their grandchildren and great grandchildren? \u00a0That\u2019s pretty sad.\u00a0 I guess I can\u2019t speak for anyone but myself but I vote to end this madness and if I keel over tomorrow from COVID-19 or any other virus that the Chinese dig out of a cave I\u2019ll go happy knowing I got to share a meal with my family and play a game of ball with my grandsons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here in the Orwellian gulag that is Woke New England even family gatherings are a fatal thought-crime punishable by whatever means is imagined most effective<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2372,2093,2341,2580],"class_list":["post-11745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-covid-19","tag-reclaiming-the-family","tag-traditional-family","tag-two-americas"],"yoast_head":"\n