Last July 4^th holiday, my wife and I did what many patriotic Americans do these days and took a trip to Canada for the long weekend.  Toronto, more specifically.  Beautiful city.  The thing I remember most about it was the roads seemed almost as bad as the Midwest, but they were offset by the sweet smell of universal healthcare.

But this has nothing to do with the rest of this story.

On the way back, we decided to pass through Niagara Falls, Buffalo (considered by many to be the Paris of Western New York) and, eventually, Erie, PA, my home for six years in the 80s.

Erie is a beautiful city on Lake Erie, and, some might say, it has seen better days.  Over the last 60 years, its population has fallen by one-third – now hovering under 100,000.  A few businesses have left, including the company which brought my father (and the rest of us) from his previous job in Detroit.  Six years later, after that company was purchased by a larger one, we were transferred down to Memphis, TN, where I went to high school, college, got drunk and somehow graduated with a degree in journalism (hence my refusal to use an Oxford comma).

But, back to Erie.

As my wife and I drove through the town and I introduced her to a piece of my history she hadn’t seen in our 18 years together, I was struck by how idyllic it looked after having been away for 30 years – ice cream shop near the beach, quiet coffee shop downtown, literal white picket fences in my old neighborhood.  My 1980s Wonder Years. Although, my Winnie Cooper at Our Lady’s Christian School (Go  Raiders!) had a different name and likely didn’t know I existed.

Those that know me now might be surprised to know that, as an elementary/middle school student, I was a somewhat quiet, dorky kid who absolutely had no idea how to be cool (okay, so maybe they’d only be surprised that I was quiet); I had no idea how to talk to girls (also, probably no surprise); and had an innate ability to blend into the proverbial wallpaper.   I was occasionally picked on in school and probably did not have the world’s highest self-esteem.

At the time, I’m not sure I figured it would ever be any different.

When you’re younger, you don’t realize that whatever you’re experiencing at that moment – particularly the bad parts – is only a temporary moment in your life.  I don’t know that we ever figure it out.  One of the downsides of living in the moment is forgetting that it’s only a moment.

But, times change, people change, problems change, and, most surprisingly, you change.  It’s funny how now looking back on those days, I remember the fun I had, the friends I hung out with and how certain songs from back then still make me smile.

Today we are going through what the TV commercials call “challenging”, “difficult” or “unprecedented” times.  For many, it could seem like a situation that has no end.  Feelings of isolation.  Lack of a human touch.  No sports except for Korean baseball and cornhole tournament reruns.  At one time, seeing Chris Cuomo’s finished basement might have sounded interesting.  Now that I’ve also seen the living room of the local traffic reporter, it’s really lost its luster.

But, here’s the point.  This is only a temporary moment in your life.  The key to living in the moment is learning to value it because it is, after all, just a moment.  It’s gone and then things get better.  Or not.  Who knows?  But it will be different.

A year from now, we may be talking about how annoyed we are with all these noisy neighborhood parties and constantly going from this event to that event.  We will look back to 2020 and think, wasn’t that quiet and relaxing?  We’ll talk about that one time when we got tan lines on our face in the shape of a mask.  We’ll talk about the creative ways we still found to hang out with each other and keep in touch.  We’ll probably talk about the boredom, too.  But we might also hear that one song that played constantly during that boredom and we might just smile.