2020 Has Me Dreaming of an Age of Love

by Ernie McCray

2020. What a year, huh?

I was in Cuernavaca, a town I’ve come to love, when the year began – a little groggy because New Year’s Eve in Mexico is an explosion of firecracker noises and gunshot noises against a background of brass and drums in surround sound at decibels seemingly without bounds.

All that aside, with a little ringing in my ears, I had a wonderful time on the first day of the year.

Our dear friend, Josefina, sat us down to fresh coffee and chilaquiles y juevos, over easy, and papaya, manzanas and peras and cheesecake and we spent the day talking away.

Then the next day we drank margaritas and dined with a beautiful view of a downtown park we had just strolled leisurely through, looking into smiling brown faces, meeting a man who offered us tickets to heaven and we joked about whether the tickets were roundtrip.

It was such a nice trip and the rest of January also was filled with pleasantries, highlighted by a visit to Tucson, my hometown, where I had the honor of being one of two key speakers at a gathering in celebration of MLK. Life was looking sexier day after day.

I have to give February an OK, too, and March came into view relatively  smooth and easy but in a week or two the world began taking a disease more seriously and suddenly I’m filled with questions, and one day I’m stacked with mourners in a church celebrating a San Diego icon’s life, wondering if being there was safe, then on the next day at a brunch in honor of Coretta Scott King, I’m greeting folks with elbow and fist bumps instead of shaking their hands and embracing them.

And, within a week the NBA and March Madness had shut down, and events I was looking forward to, and a play I was eager to see, and a reading my grandson was going to do would not come to be.

And then in mid-March some of Maria’s and my young friends were getting groceries for us and the freeways and avenues and streets were empty.

And months of the year pass as you dream of days when you can be out and about again freely and you realize that day will be a longtime coming because far too many of your fellow Americans can’t seem to comply with simple life-saving tasks like creating space between themselves and others and wearing masks.

Nevertheless, though, many people did what was right, gathering, when they felt they really had to, outside, following the rules in place for protecting and saving lives.

And we awakened, also, in other ways, getting behind “Black Lives Matter,” and realizing something really must be done about our police, and just a short while ago we went to the polls in droves and deposed an evil man who brought us nothing but seeds of destruction and cares and woes, spreading such as far and wide as they can go.

Oh, I hope we know we’ve proven to ourselves how powerful our love is, how it can lead to a citizenry unifying, learning to trust and care about each other, and redefining how we live.

So, I feel as 2020 ends as I did when it began, hopeful about life again, my spirit sensing the dawning of something special, something new and refreshing, a new age, one unlike any that’s ever been seen, one that keeps alive my hopes and dreams:

The Age of Love.