The Secret Handshake

 I am driving my wife and son a little nuts. Maybe more than a little. Ok, so that is not anything new.  A dog bites man story. But this time is worse.

I am chasing after the secret handshake. You know, the one that lets me in that door. The one I can't figure out.

I try not to be frantic, to accept reality and soldier on. But it is difficult. A rumor here. An email there. I see it happening an inch out of my reach. What am I missing?

My son is an absolute genius at chasing down leads. At finding the answers that elude others. For years I have marvelled at his capabilities. I just get out of the way and await his direction. 

But there are limits, even for him.

A nation lines up for its shot at freedom. Release from the shackles that have kept us encumbered. One small step through that door. One large step back into life.

There has been a mental and physical pandemonium these past weeks as we line up for the promise of tomorrow. In folding chairs we await salvation. With fingers doing an endless dance, searching, searching, always searching for the secret handshake. At three in the morning. When no one else is looking. Where no one else is looking.

We have spent the better part of a year being patient, being scared, being always ready to retrieve the existence we left behind. And then came the rollout. 

It has been the poster child of what the last four years have entailed. Haphazard. The only rule seeming to be there are no rules. It has been, in some ways, harder to accept than the disease itself.

Thinking the stone you left unturned was the one where the secret code was hidden.

Those meaning well only amplifying the angst. Leading me on paths ending always at a brick wall.

I have to be zen about this. There is no point in making myself, in making those I love, upset with the reality of the moment. As our soon to be golfing President so famously and so wisely instructed us in the midst of the explosion he vastly amplified with his incompetence and gross distortions, "it is what it is."

And so it is.

But you will have to excuse me now. I have to take leave of you as I haven't checked that site that someone said someone else said holds the key to the kingdom.

The secret handshake.