Rights and Freedoms

Imagine this: Close your eyes and you’ve just spent the night in a cold, concrete subway station wondering what is going on “topside”. The lights are flickering. You’ve just realized you’re a little bit claustrophobic. You can hear the gunfire from the big guns, topside. You can hear the air raid sirens wailing. You can hear muffled crying from frightened children and terrified adults. You’re hunkered down with your family, maybe your friends. You didn’t know if you should have brought food or drinks or hygiene products or a book or a device charger or a blanket or cash or toys for the kids. Imagine all of that, if you possibly can. I have trouble with understanding how it would feel but I get the picture. I don’t know how I’d manage under those circumstances. Ukraine.

Today, Sunday, I am not hiding in an underground safe space. Today, Sunday, I’m sitting safely in my own home which is located on a quiet street in a quiet community. I have a hot, fresh coffee. I have homemade cinnamon rolls. I’m steps away from my bed, my kitchen, my “facilities”, my books, my music, my television and LOML. But today, Sunday, I want to curl up into a tight, snuggly ball, stick the squishy orange earplugs in, pull up the blankets and turn-off the whole world. I am tired. I don’t feel great. I’m overwhelmed by our world, which is packed to overflowing with people who just don’t want to do this “hate” crap anymore. I am fed up with the divisions and I’m sick with the fear of the outcome of the war foisted upon Ukraine. There’s a song in my head and it won’t go away. It’s an earworm. It breaks into my safe thoughts and I wonder if we really are on the Eve of Destruction? Maybe you feel the same way, deep down. I hope we aren’t on the brink, because I’ve got oodles of plans for so many, many tomorrows. I want to see all of my kids and their kids, together, enjoying the sunshine, sharing drinks, enjoying an out-of-doors meal in our backyard. I want to hear that screen door slam one more time. Heck, I’ve got plans for the Spring Break. I also have plans to go to Applefest in Brighton. Who knows, maybe the Milford Fair will happen this year? Perhaps our family will get together to have some laughs and laughingly score the biggest bellyflop into the ceement pond or giggle about the antics of a game of pool-volleyball. I have cycling, hiking, walking, camping and laughing on my horizon. And music. Homegrown music. This is what I want. I don’t want to hate anyone. I don’t want people to suffer for their right to be alive, to be who they were born to be, to be free, to live without fear.

I am tired of watching “the news”. I really am. But I’ve been glued to “the news” for two years. It started with COVID-19, which seemed like the worst thing that could possibly happen. So many of my days were spent watching and waiting for the curve to flatten. So many months were spent wearing a face mask, trying to get appointments for vaccinations, avoiding family and friends, doing a bit of argy-bargy with anti-vaxers and wondering if every sniffle, sneeze or cough was “the VID”. At least with COVID-19, we found a way to laugh at our mask-wearing selves while we fussed and fretted. And just when all things COVID- 19 started to calm down and turn around, a convoy of people, who thought their rights and freedoms were being trampled upon and stifled, decorated their family’s Rolls-Can-Hardly, paraded up and over to the Nation’s Capital and set up a friggin’ Winter Carnival, complete with sideshows, fracases, BS and a midway for the kiddies. The whole Country was held hostage while a few “Freedom Fighters” had some fun on their “winter break”. And then? Well, and then what those so-called Freedom Convoy wanted happened, in spite of their tantrums. Curves were flattening, masks were less important, vaccines were injected, mandates were eased. Then one day the “Freedom Fighters” bundled the Weber and the Bouncy Castles and went home or to jail or to who knows—or cares—where. I tuned out for a day or three. I read a book. And then? Well, and then, just as some of us started to breathe collective sighs of relief, the real rights and freedoms of the people of Ukraine were being set ablaze by a psychopathic, narcissistic, “deludinoid”. Forget the pandemic, far worse could potentially happen. I put away my books, put my coffee mug away and tuned into the news. And then?

“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.” – Albert Einstein

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca