Month: January 2023

I think that perhaps we are all still a bit reluctant to celebrate a new year after the events of the past three years. I know that I am a bit hesitant to believe that I can plan without disruptions and losses. So much has happened since we all spent the New Year’s Eve of 2019 so unaware of what the world would soon face. Nothing in my rather long lifetime might have prepared me for the events that ensued, not even my fascination with books talking about the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. I had listened to warnings from public health experts that we were bound to face another worldwide medical emergency, but I tended to believe that even if it happened it would not affect me. How wrong I was!

As I write this blog I look across the street where I partied at the end of 2019. The theme of the gathering was” life through the decades.” We danced to music from the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties of the twentieth century. As midnight approached we switched to current music while laughing and enjoying our good fortune. 

In the new year I remember preparing split pea soup for luck and tossing in a side of black-eyed peas for good measure. I had plans to travel to Scotland in the spring. I had signed up for a continuing education course at Rice University. Life was full and wonderful even in February when I spent an entire day laughing and playing games with my brothers and their wives. We had a ball talking about all of our plans for the coming months, plans that would soon enough fall apart. 

A friend invited me and my husband to the Houston Rodeo Cook-off in early March. It was packed with people having a great time, not realizing that in only a week or so life as we had known it would change so drastically. I remember feeling just a tiny bit leery because I had read a small article about a strange disease beginning to show up in different parts of the world. I had asked my husband if we needed to prepare in case we got sick. I thought he would laugh at me but he too had heard about this virus from a man that he follows on YouTube. So, I purchased some extra cans of food and set aside a bit more toilet paper and some cold medications, then went out and had fun as usual. 

We all know that it did not take long for the rollercoaster ride to begin, along with the politicization of everything associated with how to respond. Not only did one million people die in the United States and millions more around the world, leaving children without parents and grandparents, wives without husbands, but friends and families began to argue over who was right and who was wrong. Doctors and nurses morphed from heroes to villains in many people’s minds. We lost friends over disagreements about masks and lockdowns. Many became depressed. Some turned to suicide for relief. We all wondered why we were unable to draw together rather than apart. New Year’s Eve 2020 ended with a whimper but still some hope.

The months of 2021 went by and we adapted according to our beliefs. My household became accustomed to avoiding large groups, mostly staying home, a situation that was perhaps somewhat easy for us because we are all introverts. The hard part was watching friends and family members suffer and even die. We went through one day after another hoping to see an end to the sorrow. That came in 2021 when the vaccines became available. Suddenly we saw a dim light at the end of a long tunnel and I cried tears of gratitude when I finally got my first jab. It felt glorious. 

Just when we all believed that the worst was behind us the aggressive Delta variant began to attack the world again. Those with updated vaccines mostly did better than the people who had refused to get vaccinated. There were more deaths and more divisions. A huge rift developed that became ever more ugly. Those who were vaccinated got together in small groups wearing masks. Others tempted nature by eschewing all precaution. My husband and I were careful. We had elderly relatives who needed our care. We had to stay healthy and not bring a virus into their homes. We had learned how to enjoy our restricted lives, but it seemed so very long since we had felt free to do whatever we wished to do. Then came another New Year’s Eve without parties or bells or whistles and 2021 came to a close. 

The dawn of 2022 brought a bit more optimism than we had felt in a very long time. Nonetheless it also heralded the end of life for many of our most beloved friends and family members. It seemed to be the year of the funeral or the horrific medical diagnosis. Even one of the neighbors who had been at the party of New Year’s Eve 2019 died. The husband of a dear friend who was fully vaccinated caught Covid and did not make it. My mother-in-law succumbed to heart failure at the same time that my father-in-law had emergency surgery and later contracted Covid at the hospital and almost died. One of the dearest and most incredible friends that I have ever had left this world far too quickly in 2022. Somehow all of the hope that I had felt drained from my heart. 

I know that I am not alone in my anxieties and lingering feelings of sorrow. It is a worldwide side-effect of the pandemic that has shaken people all over the world. We have dealt with unprecedented loss of life and health for three years and even though our ordeal appears to be over, we are somehow not yet willing to believe that the worst is past us. We are only very cautiously optimistic as 2022 comes to a close. Will 2023 become the year of celebration as we move beyond the horrors that have had an effect on all of us? 

We cannot answer that question with assurance, but what we have learned for certain is the value of each person in our lives. We know without doubt the importance of cherishing each moment of happiness that comes our way. We now understand how we must support one another and offer kindness with every opportunity that we get. We have made it for now. Let’s make every second of the new year count.   

I grew up in southeast Houston during the fifties and sixties. It was a quiet, family oriented suburban area back then that boasted post World War II homes as well as high end designer houses that were featured in architectural magazines. The area was the home of the first shopping center in the city and later the first air conditioned center filled with everything from dime stores to elegant department stores, bowling alleys to boutiques. It was a little slice of heaven for those of us who lived there. 

My family had been shopping for a new home in a part of town that was the mirror image of southeast Houston back then. My father and mother were leaning towards purchasing a new home in Braeswood on Bluebonnet Lane, but my father’s unexpected death put that house out of my mother’s new economic range. She instead moved us to a small but sturdy wooden house in a neighborhood called Overbrook nestled long Simms Bayou. 

It was a wonderful place for being a child. Our church and our school was within walking distance of our home. There was a neighborhood grocery store at the end of our street. Children were everywhere and it felt as though we knew everyone who lived there. It was a place that might have been featured in shows like Happy Days or Wonder Years. While there may have been darkness or sorrow hidden inside some of the homes, for us kids it felt like the safest happiest place on earth. Indeed most of the people there were good hardworking and loving souls. 

People stayed put back then, so the kids I knew in fourth grade were still attending classes with me when I was a senior in high school. We spent our growing up years riding our bicycles up and down the streets and across the bayou on a bridge that led to Garden Villas, a tree lined haven of older homes with huge yards and a beautiful park. A bookmobile came there often enough for me to have a constant supply of books to entertain my love of literature. Classes at the park introduced me to art and dance. 

On Saturdays we traveled a short distance to Telephone Road where the Santa Rosa movie theater hosted a Fun Club just for children. For twenty five cents we got admission and were able to purchase popcorn and candy. There were games and a double feature that kept us having a good time for hours while our mothers went shopping or just enjoyed some quiet time back home. Sometimes my brothers and I would meet our cousins there which made the event even more fabulous.

Just down the street from the theater there was a bakery called the Kolache Shop where my mother purchased our birthday cakes and some of the delightful Czechoslovakian pastries filled with apples or cherries. In travels all over Texas I have yet to find kolaches as delicious as the ones we purchased there and I recently heard that it is still open and run by the same family. I suspect I will have to return there soon.

As is often the case in Houston one day a particular area is in and the next day it’s out. When I was a child my cousins who lived in an old home in the Heights were envious of our new bustling neighborhood in southeast Houston. Today the place where I lived is old and mostly unwanted while the Heights has experienced a renaissance making it one of the most sought after areas of town. If I tell the untutored about growing up in southeast Houston they can’t even begin to imagine how vibrant and beautiful it once was. 

My city has grown by leaps and bounds, becoming the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States. It is also the most diverse city in the nation with citizens who came from virtually every corner of the world. That neighborhood where my father had found a house on Bluebonnet Lane is prestigious while homes of the same kind in southeast Houston have little value. It is the nature of real estate to choose some locations over others. As the city stretched farther and farther out, my once thriving neighborhood was ignored and even forgotten. When I speak of it now, only those who lived in that part of town understand my rapturous descriptions of the once enchanting place. 

Those who were our parents are mostly gone now and the rest of us have traveled to the seven winds. A few like me live only minutes away from the old haunts in little towns like Pearland and Friendswood or out by the NASA Space Center in Clear Lake City. The rest are spread across Texas and the rest of the United States. We have moved on from our childhood homes, but we still retain the precious memories of growing up in a magical place. That part of Houston became part of our DNA. It molded us and made us strong. It was a very good place to be.