Pandemics are definitely one of those times when you realize you need each other.
But they aren’t the only times.
For example, let’s say you are a Texas 3-toed box turtle and you are lost.
Somehow, you misplaced your home. Or maybe somebody built a shopping mall on top of it and that is why you can’t find it anymore.
But you haven’t given up hope. You just keep wandering and wandering, in the process running into all kinds of trouble, including curious dogs and mean cats and large shell-less beings who keep picking you up and “rehoming” you into their backyards.
Soon you are so turned around you don’t know what to do. Then winter comes. You settle in to hibernate because you have cold blood and that is how nature made you.
In the spring, you wake up and set out once again to search for your home. You don’t eat or sleep because you are so desperate to be at home once again.
One day you are so hungry and tired you don’t know how you will go on. Someone picks you up just as you are about to cross an insanely busy street. They deliver you to a very sad large shell-less being who just lost her girl turtle and is inconsolable.
She takes you inside and feeds you salmon and loves you. A few hours later she finds her girl turtle and brings her home as well (at this point you decide it must be your lucky day).
You are still really scared and so you don’t open up much for the next four years. But then one day it occurs to you that you are home and you start to come out of your shell at last.
Then the pandemic hits.
But by this time you are feeling so brave, so very very brave, and you know you can get through anything because you are loved and cared for and you are finally home with your forever family where you belong.
Pearl, Malti, Bruce & their mama
