Maybe it’s because I’m finally really, really old, normal old, COVID old, politically and Christmas shopping old.

I might add that the best and worst thing about being old is still having my mother’s blessed memory.

As I watched the pictures of Mayfield, Kentucky, I recall a magical film. What’s the most famous tornado of your childhood, and the words spoken in that story that have become carved in our memories?

Was it not when a little girl named Dorothy Gale, in a gingham dress, stood knee deep in magic flowers and whispered to her dog, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” And wasn’t there a song about a rainbow?

There was no rainbow over Kentucky or in Kansas, as a “Wicked Witch” tornado tore a miles-wide path through America’s heartland.

We all watched as the weary survivors began scratching the wood and metal, kicking through the debris, hoping to hear a familiar voice, or find a hand with a throbbing pulse.

I keep thinking, what does it even mean to be a “survivor,” when you are the only person in your family left alive and alone?

No, Toto, we’re not in Kansas, or the Technicolor dream world of Oz. We’re in Maine, the Pine Tree State, where our daily numbers keep floating up like red death balloons, because somewhere, important people turned their backs on the truth.

And despite all the facts, many of us here — friends and neighbors and relatives — are turning their backs again, ignoring science, dropping to their knees and begging God for help.

A God, mind you, who has already given them the scientists and miraculous vaccines, that have proven again and again to save lives.

Now, the age-old season of joy has arrived.

So what do I do now? It’s that time of year when columnists on all the remaining newspapers in America are asked to come up with something soft, something with warm words that comfort the weary and our world in this Christmas, full of the weary.

How do we do that?

All over the world, the weary are burying their dead, the aged and the young, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, in the cold earth.

How then is this writer — who learned his craft performing and writing for comedians, and is compelled daily to put on the belled cap of the joker — to pull this trick off year after year?

Maybe this year we should add a new carol. How about, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow?”

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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