On Friday March 11, two years to the day the world began the massive shutdown due to COVID and all the fear and chaos that we have experienced, I walked into a WAWA on Long Beach Island to get a cup of coffee. It was a beautiful very early morning, having come from spending a night at the Atlantic City Convention Center watching the MAAC quarterfinal men’s basketball matchup between Siena (my LBI neighbor Arthur O’Brien is a die hard Saints fan and alum and I got to catch up with old friends like Dave Siroty and Siena AD John D’Argenio) and Quinnipiac, and we didn’t have milk in our shore house, so out I went. It is about a 15 minute walk to WAWA.
As I bought the coffee and walked to a counter that no longer had large face shields keeping employees from customers, I was thanked, as is the custom at WAWA, by the person at the counter, now unmasked and smiling broadly. That wasn’t unusual for sure, given the always friendly nature of WAWA employees. What caught me was the persons name tag, and their name.
Faith.
It was the exact thing that has gotten us through these past two years, the thing we needed when we were down the most, the element we will need more of going forward as we move ahead into a still fluid and uncertain world but one that is full of better…Not just faith in religion, but faith in ourselves, faith in our friends, faith in our decisions, faith in making things better, one step at a time, doing little things like smiling and saying thank you when you get a cup of coffee to start a busy day.
Faith.
Thanks WAWA for the reminder. And back to our normal course of business.
We need it now more than ever. Let March Madness continue…!
