(“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”)

What can be said in these perilous times? Yes, we were the generation that grew up with The Bomb and an unspoken expectation that we all might be incinerated with little notice. However, we did so and comfort and prosperity. It was our parents and grandparents who knew the privations and suffering of the Great Depression and the world wars. We only heard about them.

We are in unknown territory. Will we skate through it relatively easily, and in a few years look back upon it as a Y2K sort of event? Or will we lose friends and loved ones and find our lives changed forever.

At the moment how bad it seems depends largely on where you are. Bad enough to shelter in place on a quarter acre at the end of a cul-de-sac or, worse yet, in a fourth floor walk up urban apartment….and then to have your daily visit to the barn where your horse is stabled denied to you! Joni Mitchell’s words, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

Some of us are much more fortunate. Our horses are in the backyard. Double fence lines have kept them social distancing from the neighbors’ horses for years. The one thing I have learned for sure is that if this is a practice run or retirement, I just want to go back to work!

(Keeping one’s social distance)