Our Related, Belated Celebration By Bill Crane
Across the nation this summer, Americans have been “un-hitting” the pause button, resuming travel, family vacations, and reunions, getting out of the house and largely back among the unmasked masses. Our combined anti-pandemic arsenal of vaccines and boosters, rapid tests, improved general hygiene, and regional reactions to spikes and surges to periodic attacks by new strains and variants of Covid-19 show America again resilient, if not still a bit embattled. Just over two years ago our small family began plans for a trip back to Manhattan and Broadway. My two loving daughters, at different stages in life, both love music and musical comedies. Olivia preferred more of the Disney variety, and Barclay more Broadway and the Great White Way – though still also a Disney Princess at heart. Hugh Jackman, perhaps best-known as The Wolverine to millions, is also a great song and dance man, and he was to front a new Broadway revival of The Music Man. Trip dates were selected, opening preview dates projected, and plans began to come together. But then a cascading series of events would blow up and quickly set aside those best-laid plans. First-born Barclay and husband Cody had also been working on starting a family. Two traumatic miscarriages were followed by a miraculous pregnancy in early 2020, and almost as soon as that became viable, we were doubly blessed with the news of expecting twin boys. The Covid-19 pandemic would soon cripple the national economy, shutter Broadway, and post-pone the show opening by at least a year. Our twin Mighty Mites would arrive in the fall of 2020, entering the stage on September 18, 2020, on the same night that US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was exiting. Our family matriarch Lynn Crane (Shirl to most of us) and patriarch Jerry Crane, would succumb to Covid-19 early on, in pre-vaccine days, as did Barclay and Cody Carson and our newborn and preemie Mighty Mites. Mom’s health would never fully recover and would remain in decline, and Dad’s bounce-back was long and halting. It would be a long slog back to full speed for the Carson household. Our Mites would then experience a host of childhood illnesses in
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