Badges—a Re-entry Story.
(This piece was originally written at the end of May. I stepped away from my blog at that time and am now coming back and found this piece to be worth sharing. Amazing how much the landscape has shifted, evolved and re-acclimated in just under two months.) 1. The Badges. Opal’s Girl Scout badges dropped from her vest one at a time like scales from a sick gecko. I followed low behind her, doing my best to duck out of other peoples' photos, and pocketed them as they fell, until my back pockets were lumpy and odd. We had gathered at a local park for Opal's Girls Scout troop's “bridging ceremony,” where the troop would make its transition to from "juniors" to "cadettes." Girl Scouts was one of the few blessed activities that kept going without a hitch all through COVID, thanks to ZOOM technology and the hard work of their two beloved troop leaders. Only in hindsight can I truly recognize the few rare threads that stayed the course through pandemic thick-an
