By Sue Murphy
There’s a prayer offered before meals that asks for God’s blessing on the food on the table and “the hands that prepared it.” I’d like to ask the same.
2020 has been a year like no other, and the fact that any of us are still functioning at all is testimony to the work of the hands of some wonderful people.
Where to start? Let’s begin with a GIANT thank you to the doctors and nurses who have been fighting the absolute worst of this coronavirus for months and months and months. In addition, I’d like to add a gratitude shout-out to the workers who follow behind them with the mops and buckets and sanitizer, saving the world one swipe at a time.
Police officers? You betcha, every single day. I know there have been some tough, unfortunate incidents of late and change needs to happen, but nobody knows that better than the officers themselves, the brave souls who face danger with every encounter and have to make split-second, life-altering decisions as a matter of course. I couldn’t do it. Could you?
Firefighters? Oh my goodness, yes. This year especially, their work has been and continues to be superhuman, and yet they take time to come to my grandson’s kindergarten class and teach them to stop, drop and roll.
Where would we be without all of our first responders? In a world of hurt, that’s where.
But here’s where I’d like to add a word about the second responders, those folks who show up after the accident or the hurricane or the fire and help the victims pull their lives back together, those people with the blankets and the bottled water and the hotel vouchers, the ones who go through the rubble and help people salvage whatever they can take forward, physically and emotionally.
The mail carriers and package delivery people have become a lifeline for all of us, but I’d like to add a word of thanks to the people who keep cranking out the cardboard and tape and all those plastic packaging materials, people who take my computer order and scurry through the warehouse to assemble it, no matter how odd or cumbersome it happens to be.
And speaking of odd and cumbersome, how about the people who made those cardboard cutouts to take the place of the fans in the football and baseball and basketball stands? No small feat, and it added a touch of whimsy to the sports proceedings when whimsy is exactly what we needed. And while I’m at it, can I get an “Atta boy/girl” for the crowd noise DJ’s who made it sound like we were actually there? Who could have seen that job description coming?
Thank you, thank you, thank you to every single person who has been walking ahead of me sanitizing surfaces, everyone who stayed home when they had a cough even though they were fairly sure it was just allergies, all those people who stood up to the scoffers and wore their masks and continue to wear their masks, not so much for their own protection as for the protection of those around them, lest they asymptomatically spread the virus to some poor soul who would unknowingly carry it home to their grandma. Being a grandma, I appreciate that.
I saw a quote the other day that said, “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.” So this Thanksgiving, I will be saying, thank you, fellow crew members. You have kept me afloat.
God bless us every one.
