It’s summer. Those two words are packed with the promise that there are new days ahead while recognizing a continuation of the things we have always done. Especially this year.
Here at Adams Cold Storage, summer means continuing the work we have done for the past decade: safely storing food supplies from across the supply chain, making sure it receives the top-graded industry standard care while it’s in our secure facility, and helping our customer partners get their goods to all of the right places around the country and around the world.
In many ways, we’re approaching this summer exactly like we did last summer. As a key component of the food storage, transportation and logistics essential industries identified by the Department of Homeland Security, ACS worked on site last summer. While many families adapted to working from home — from carving out a place for work to navigating pants-optional Zoom meetings — our family adapted to being safe while traveling to work and adhering to increased health safety measures on site. Pants, it should be noted, were always required here.
If we’re honest, though, this summer feels a bit different, like there is something bright just over the horizon. Entering into June, just over 40 percent of the U.S. population, including 38 percent of Floridians, have been fully vaccinated from the COVID-19 flu that put a cloud over last summer. Mask restrictions have become recommendations. Nursing homes are allowing visitors. Families are getting together. Beaches are becoming populated. Arenas are starting to fill up with fans. Bands are going out on tour.
It almost seems normal – or what we thought of as normal. Yet, there’s a sense of awe and wonder just under the surface. Maybe that sense of awe and wonder is how we should have approached “normal” all along. There is something inspiring in the normal, everyday thing we call life.
And so, this month, let’s all celebrate summer and the jobs we have always done, while at the same time, recognize that in doing our “normal” jobs every day, everything will feel as though it has changed.