By Doug Barker
The Daily World
Thanks for sharing your stories with us. A couple weeks ago, Daily World Publisher Mike Hrycko invited readers to share their stories of living in an age when touching your face is like playing with a loaded revolver. If you think that analogy is an exaggeration, my wife — trust me — does not.
Your stories have been wonderful — touching, funny and very human. Please keep sharing them with us. They describe life in these times in ways that news stories do not. Maryann Welch wrote about her visits to see her 99-year-old father through the window of his nursing home, one of which turned into a spur-of-the-moment family gathering with siblings who could participate through a Zoom teleconference.
Ella Seely also wrote about being led to technology that enables her extroverted side to stay in touch with others and stay connected to the Timberland Library System.
If there’s been a common theme, it’s been gratitude for something or someone. Kristin Farris of Ocean Shores wrote eloquently about her fears for her sons. They come in the middle of the night, uninvited. And they like to stay a while. She wrote that she tries to redirect her thoughts, but it’s no match for the scary scenarios that run through her head.
But she’s grateful for the extra time she’s spending with her teenage son and doesn’t want to squander it, so she perseveres, for herself and for him.
“Though some of the things happening are unpredictable and unsettling during this time, one thing I do have control over is the way I handle and respond to this,” she wrote. “I have been able to show my son that we can make the best out anything. Life goes on and we need to keep going and doing our best. We do have control of that.”
She also shared an old truism that fits these times about as well as anything: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”
The story Alan Rammer shared with readers fits that axiom perfectly. He had been scheduled to perform a wedding ceremony for a young couple on March 28. They’ll have a more formal wedding later, but they wanted to be married on the day they first planned and were undeterred. So they made a hasty decision to drive from their homes in Tacoma to his in Central Park, and he married them in his garage, with their friend as a witness, M&M cookies from Safeway, flowers in a white plastic bucket and Costco toilet paper as a wedding gift.
We’re learning to adapt.
We hope the stories you’re sharing help you, the writers, and they’re definitely helping the rest of us. Please keep them coming. We’ll run as many as we can. Keep emailing them to Mike at mhrycko@thedailyworld.com.
Doug Barker is editor of The Daily World. Reach him at dbarker@thedailyworld.com.
