Memory Turned Nightmare

When's the last time you heard a full-throated "bellylaugh?" When someone lets go spontaneously with a prolonged hoot that spills over and fills a corner of a room? A happy eruption of joy?  Actually, when was the last time I enjoyed that unexpected freedom and released ripples of happiness? I can't remember.  Not because the synapses that connect in my brain have been relegated to the "misfiring" heap.  No, nothing's wrong with either my short or long-term memory.

"Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way. 
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days."

And enjoy a belly-laugh or two.  Long before "political correctness," among other debilitating phenomena embedded themselves in our culture. Or ethos. Or something. Or somewhere.  Hmm.

I sing no paean to nostalgia, although it seems a safe enough place to alight.  It's the circumstances outside of my control that I bemoan.

One hundred years have elapsed since the Spanish flu ravaged the world, which offered time and distance to forget the scourge and build memories of more lighthearted times.  Episodically, times were tough as our parents, relatives, and history classes recalled for us. Yet, recovery inevitably sprang from our loins and wombs, and often there'd be "Dancing in the street," as Martha and the Vandellas memorialized.

COVID-19 moved in not like "The fog comes, on little cat feet," as Carl Sandburg described in one of his poems. Except "It (didn't) sit looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then move on."  No! The pandemic became a contagion almost before it could be named.  A reversal of "Now you see it, now you don't!" Of a sudden and certainty, it swept the world, marking us with devastation and destruction.  Yet that understates the havoc and horror it continues to wreak. 

"Mem'ries
Light the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were."

Stop the world, I want to get off!  Not really.  Why? I can't help but embrace the indomitable spirit that declares a foreseeable and attainable end to this plague! The church mothers in my parents' place of worship used to chant, "Up above my head I see trouble in the air/ Up above my head I see trouble in the air/Up above my head I see trouble in the air/And I really do believe, I say I really do believe, there is a heaven somewhere/Heaven somewhere.  

Hope, as simple and firm as female voices rejoicing.  Hope springs eternal in the human breast.  That was our "Blessed assurance  Hope reassured constrains me from dwelling on things I can't control!  "Up above my head, I hear music in the air.  Up above my head, I hear music in the air/Up above my head I hear music in the air.  Up above my head, I hear music in the air/And I really do believe, I say I really do believe, there's a heaven somewhere."