This damn pandemic!  Time has passed both slow and fast, leaving the last 15 months in a blur.  Remote learning for my sons, remote work for my wife, and my business was terrible.  I focused on health, both physical and mental.  I exercised 5 days a week and I spent time leaning about Taoism and reviewing my own beliefs.  Both journeys have been worth while and enriching to both me and those around me.  My garden was amazing, and the fall of 2020 brought a magnificent harvest of the most interesting cannabis I have ever grown.

My days had order and routine, that allowed me to maximize my time at home and minimize my general panic about the world health situation.  Productive days do leave time for reflections and contemplation.  The last time I saw my sister, or my parents was winter of 2000.  We didn’t end well, and my parents died without ever talking to me again.  My sister took everything and made sure my kids got nothing.  She still dislikes me and my family and refuses to have anything to do with us.  My parents made sure to tell all my relatives how crazy and selfish I was and to never have anything to do with me.  Two decades later and I still have not heard from any family.

I realized that my life was my own and that my memories were mine!  I started remembering events and times from my life, and amazingly all the hate was gone.  All I felt was love for those memories.  Good days, bad days, important days, they were all mine and the people in those memories were mine too.  I was able to return to the past, without animosity or anger, just a genuine longing for old times.  My worst day somehow became a place of strength and love.  My tears are real, and my feelings are close as I relive old days.  To my last moment on my last day, my memories are the treasures I cling to.

I hold out my thumb and hitch a ride on a passing memory or trip back to a place I was before - “hitchhiking through your soul” is always a trip home.  The journey can be real, too.  A house of mystery from your youth or an old familiar street, or a store that has survived all these years.  Places you can hitch a ride to and return for a moment to a time in the past.  On this trip, time loses all meaning and every familiar item is a symphony of emotion.  Truly the summer of 2021 will be a pageant of happiness and freedom, a perfect time to bring back simple things from all of our pasts.