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I just ordered $100 worth of dairy-free meal replacement smoothies for my teenager, to pick up at Whole Foods tomorrow, because eating anything solid causes her severe stomach pain and she’s nauseated all the time. She came home early from school yesterday, with a COVID test in hand and instructions on how to take it with a certified COVID test instructor watching her on video. She has taken dozens of COVID tests already, and she knows how to do it, but I understand they want to make sure people are doing it right. Certified COVID test instructor Mhaxine (who must recite her script a hundred times a day) had us focus my phone’s camera on various codes on the box and on my ID and on the test results. Zoe doesn’t have COVID, which I already knew. But now you can’t be home sick from school or go to the clinic without testing. You can’t go back to school without emailing the negative test results to the school nurse and attendance office. Meanwhile, we are going back and forth with the pediatrician and the pediatric gastroenterologist and Zoe is scheduled to have an endoscopy in two weeks. She’s missed two days of crew–which you’re not supposed to miss any days of between February 21 and the end of May. Tomorrow I’m going to deliver an açaí bowl to her at lunchtime because it’s one of the only things she’s been able to eat over the past few days without feeling sick. When your kid is miserable, all your priorities shift.
At least she has beautiful nails. I took her with me to the nail salon last weekend and she somehow managed to get acrylic nails without me noticing until I had to pay the bill. Even if she can’t eat, she can at least admire her nails and enjoy the sound of tapping them on her phone.
I have a list on my desk of all the appointments I need to schedule: mammogram (oh I guess I need to see the gynecologist first, to get a referral), colonoscopy, dentist, kids’ dentist, my dermatologist, etc. All things I’ve been putting off or rescheduling since COVID. Hopefully I won’t have lumps or polyps or cavities or dangerous moles. I keep thinking I could just spend a day making appointments, but that would not be a very pleasant day. Since COVID seems to be never going away, I just need to suck it up.
Also tomorrow I am taking Niki to a camp that they don’t especially want to go to, even though it seems amazing, because they would rather stay home and play video games all day, which they think is awesome but I do not. Tomorrow is a parent-teacher conference day, so they don’t have school, but I still have to work. Someday we will have a house where I can have an office that is not in the same room as the tv and the xbox, but that day has not yet come. So off to camp they go. Last week I finally finished signing them up for summer camps and classes. This year they have fencing and archery, a camp where they drive to different parks and explore them and look for little creatures and give them names (at least that’s what they did at that camp last year), book illustration, art, and Minecraft camp (I consented to one week of this since the rest of the camps are active or artsy). Three of the weeks (book illustration and art) are just half day classes rather than full day camps because I don’t have to work those weeks and so Niki will not complain about having to go outside when it’s hot or eat lunch in a room that’s smelly. I would say my kids are spoiled, but truthfully I don’t like eating lunch outside on the ground when it’s hot or in a room that’s smelly, so I can’t blame them.
Oh, how could I forget Niki is also going to sleep away camp for the first time this summer. We all think they will love it. They’ve been to family camp at Camp Friendship twice already. They know the people, they know the place. They have not, however, slept away from us in quite a while. They can go to sleep if someone is at our house, but not if they’re at someone else’s house. And they still love to fall asleep intertwined with a parent. We are having faith that it will all work out when they are at camp. Zoe will be there too, but of course not in the cabin with them. We still have six months to prepare. Zoe was homesick at night for the first few years she went to camp, even though she loved it there. She says she eventually would fall asleep just because she was exhausted. I am constantly reminding myself that my kids are capable of things we haven’t seen them do yet, and they will be ok. Hopefully we’ll be ok too. Whenever Zoe is at camp I check the website compulsively for photos of her having fun, and race to the mailbox to look for letters. I remind myself that, during a rocky first grade year, Niki dreaded school–and then it ended because of COVID. Then we homeschooled for a year. And they did not especially want to go back to school for third grade because it was so much fun being home with me all day! And they never had to get dressed! And they played video games after they finished their work! It took a while for them to get used to school again (as it did for most kids I think, whether or not they were homeschooled or virtual schooled or hybrid schooled last year) and now they actually like school. They come home and talk about what they learned, and look forward to seeing their friends, and miss school when they have to stay home. I honestly wasn’t sure that would ever happen again, since it basically hadn’t happened since kindergarten. I had started to think kindergarten was some magical year that we would never experience again and school would be a battle forever. But it’s ok now.
And there is a nation of innocent people being attacked for no reason by an evil lunatic dictator. There are a lot of blue and yellow flags and lights and tributes. But I sure don’t know what to do, except wonder why our world is such a mess. The president stood up for LGBTQIA+ kids and mental health care in his State of the Union speech, but did not mention canceling student debt, or racial equity, or DC statehood. I did enjoy seeing two women–Kamala Harris and Nanci Pelosi–sitting behind him though, instead of two white guys. And maybe if the other old white guys don’t get in the way, Ketanji Brown Jackson will be confirmed to the Supreme Court and we’ll be just a little closer to having more justices who look like the people in our country and again, not all old white guys. No offense to the old white guys I love. They are not the ones I’m talking about.
In preparation for a meeting at work today I watched this video by Georgetown Law professor Kristin Henning, author of The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth. I have the book on my desk to start reading next week. As part of my new job with DC Action, I’m working with folks to reframe the conversation on youth and crime. Professor Henning describes in the video how Black young people are targeted and often arrested or harmed because they’re seen doing normal adolescent activities. DC Action and our partners are working to help District leaders, journalists, and others understand that there’s more to the story of a 14-year-old charged with carjacking than the need to lock him up for a long time or hold him accountable. Does it not occur to anyone that when 12-, 13-, and 14-year-olds are committing crimes like these, we need to look deeper? As I’ve written in op-eds and blog posts, the people who need to be accountable are the adults who are failing to provide meaningful out-of-school-time activities, mentoring, emotional support, job opportunities, and mental health care to young people–especially young Black people–who have suffered disproportionately through the pandemic. I see the struggles in my own kids, who have as much support and resources as they could possibly need. So when I read every day about people trying to ban books by and about Black and brown people and LGBTQIA+ people (don’t get me started on Texas Gov. Abbott who would rather have queer kids committing suicide than offer their families support) and school systems prohibiting teachers and students from discussing race or racism, or people saying antiracism is actually racism, I get enraged. No wonder I can’t sleep.
This, I think, is why people are obsessed with Wordle right now. It’s not always easy, but it’s definitely solvable. You can point to it (which is why so many people post their scores, although I do not) and say, “Hey, I did a thing! I accomplished something despite my existential angst and general feeling of despondence about our country and our world and all the personal and global problems with which I am grappling.” Or maybe that’s just why I play Wordle.
I haven’t been back to church in weeks, even though they’ve resumed in-person services. Going to church has always brought joy to me and been so important in my life, but the thought of going back again where everyone is masked and I don’t recognize even my friends and hugging is no longer a thing just makes me anxious and sad. I know wishing everything were back to “normal” is futile and there’s no such thing as normal anymore. But I haven’t yet arrived at a state of grace where I can embrace the constant change and dizzying feeling of flux. Maybe some days. But not today.
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When you’re a writer who earns a living telling other people’s stories, it can be challenging to find time to write your own. And when there is a lot happening that you are compelled to write, and you don’t sit down to do it, a dangerous bottleneck of thoughts builds up in your brain, which becomes so crowded that it’s hard for any single idea to push through the crowd. Then when one persistent little guy makes it out (like that lucky sperm in those books about sex ed you read as a kid!), you start to write that paragraph and approximately 30 seconds later you wonder if it’s the most important one to write because all those others are trying to muscle their way through as well. And you question what important even means, and who you are writing for, and what everything means, and then you get distracted by Facebook and text messages and checking your credit score and organizing your art supplies and thinking about ordering more art supplies even though you’re running out of room to store the ones you already have. And so on.
Adulting is freaking exhausting. And adulting combined with parenting–especially when parenting during, say, the first week back to school after an 18-month pandemic-induced hiatus–is just too much. This week involved calling several doctors and driving to myself and the kids to five health and medical appointments (everything’s fine, just taking care of things that had been pushed off during the summer) and picking up prescriptions. And making lunches for school which I haven’t had to do since 2019. And filling out a million forms. You get the idea. And none of these things is too much by itself, but on top of the actual work I do for my job, and trying to communicate with my friends and family–all of whom are having their own intense adulting weeks–is a lot. I was talking with someone today who said that the past 18 months was like running a marathon, but instead of having time now to recover, we have another whole marathon ahead of us. News flash! The pandemic isn’t over yet! The world is still on fire! She said that we should just walk this marathon. Since sitting it out is not an option.
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Over the past four weeks I have:
- Sent my kid to robotics camp after he had been home or with family for 465 days. He did not like the camp, which was not at all what was advertised, but basically a reprise of various Lego camps he outgrew in previous years. They gave him an orange shirt to wear every day. Later, after the shirt had been laundered and returned to his drawer, he said we should “take it out and burn it.” The camp was held entirely outside. The second day it was canceled due to rain. On the fourth day, Zeke came home with a stuffy nose. I took him to get a rapid COVID test at an establishment called Same Day Testing that specializes in rapid COVID tests. That may actually be the only thing they do. Same Day Testing is adjacent to a shopping mall and looks like a day spa. The nurse? technician? person with the swab? had a lovely conversation with Zeke about their shared affinity for sloths. Thankfully, his test was negative.
- Sent my kid to fencing and archery camp, which he and I both fervently hoped would be more fun than the aforementioned robotics camp. He enjoyed the archery and learned about different kinds of materials used in construction of bows and arrows. He hit an occasional target. In the afternoon, they went inside for fencing, where they used sabers. Apparently they wore helmets and jackets, but nothing protected their legs so by the end of the week his legs were covered in saber bruises. Fencing was hard and tiring, he reported. The highlight of this camp seemed to be the instructor’s personal collection of medieval weapons, which he brought in for show and tell. One of them was a pole covered in spikes. Another one was a hammer that Zeke said was, “designed to crush someone’s skull.” It’s all fun and games until someone gets their skull crushed, right?
- Sent my kid to Broadway Disney camp. To my surprise, he agreed to this camp when I proposed it several months ago. He likes musicals, he likes Disney, he likes singing, and he likes dancing. However, when I picked him up after camp today, he said they “forced” the kids to sing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” from Mary Poppins, which he refused to do. I said, “I thought you liked to sing. You sing all the time at home.” He said, “I only like to sing to annoy people.” And they “forced” the kids to learn a dance to a song from The Lion King, which he did not care for because it involved complicated footwork and squatting. He said he likes to tap dance, and sometimes other kinds of dance, but apparently not that dance. He acknowledged that he enjoyed the games they played, and making up a story with one instructor, and the time he was allowed to draw, during which he drew “an angry potato” and alligator Loki.
- Gone shoe shopping with my kid, who chose slip-on Vans with elevated glittery rainbow soles that are really cool but apparently too heavy to run in. Fortunately we also bought rainbow tie-dye Skechers with a velcro strap because he says he won’t learn to tie his shoes until he’s 10 because he has other, more important things to do. The Skechers came from the “girls” section of the store, because obviously shoes must have genders. The tags I tore off when we got home said “Skechers Girl!” in swirly pastel letters. Because obviously only girls like rainbow colors. Boys can only wear shoes that are blue, green, red, or gray. Zeke said he cannot wear green shoes because, “green is my mortal enemy.” But I guess that does not apply to light green, because the Crocs he chose were light green and lavender. Also they were from the women’s section because the kids section did not have his size. Again, why can’t they just organize the shoe store in size order. Here are very small shoes, which you can see are appropriate for toddlers. Here are slightly larger shoes for young children. And so on, until you get to gigantic shoes for people with generously sized feet. Then people can come in and decide what color and style shoes they want that are in their size, without having to wade through gender and other labels. If Zeke is an 8-year-old boy (which he is) and the shoes that fit him are in the women’s section, the store is really missing out on selling more shoes to more people who don’t think to look across gender and age for the right size.
Heard my kid say numerous times that he doesn’t have any friends. Which is painful to hear, and also true. Not because he isn’t likable or great at making friends, but because I homeschooled him for over a year because of this damn pandemic. His best kid friend his is cousin, with whom he has a close but often fraught relationship. Apparently some of the kids at some of the camps have been nice, but he hasn’t yet met anyone with whom he really clicked. And of course it’s hard to do that in a week when you’re constantly in structured activities. I am sending all of my good intentions and positive energy into the universe that his third grade class will include at least a handful of awesome kids who Zeke will enjoy and who will appreciate him in all his cleverness and creativity and absurdity.
Read and listened to a lot of Norse mythology with Zeke. It turns out we both really like Norse mythology. We highly recommend listening to Neil Gaiman read his own book, aptly titled, Norse Mythology. And last night we finished the first installment of the ridiculously prolific Rick Riordon’s Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard trilogy. Zeke has also sprinkled some Greek mythology into his reading, including Percy Jackson of course, but his heart is in the nine worlds.
Reading a lot of books and a wide variety of genres and authors was probably the best thing Zeke did during his homeschool tenure. Mostly, he would still rather play video games than read, but he did read and he still likes to read and we enjoy reading together. So that’s something. In addition to the basic requirements, we also focused a lot on animals, art and art history, and the kind of social studies most kids don’t get in school–heavy on the civil rights, Black Lives Matter, women’s history, LGBTQIA+ history, Howard Zinn, etc. Our biggest struggle was writing, but somehow Zeke managed to craft a story that ended up on the Story Pirates podcast, which was exciting for both of us. Homeschooling wasn’t always easy, but I am proud of what we did together, and I’m pretty sure Zeke learned some things.
There are three more weeks of camp after this one. Perhaps it is too much to ask for me to pick him up at the end of the day and hear him say, “that was amazing! I can’t wait to go back tomorrow,” and “I made a friend today!” But I’m still hoping. If nothing else, camp is forcing us both to slowly get back into the habit of a regular bedtime and packing lunch and getting dressed before noon. We will need those skills come fall.
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When people talk about having “all the feels,” does that include feelings like grumpy, disappointed, jealous, and agitated? My sense is that “all the feels” usually means “bittersweet” or “proud, yet wistful,” or something else that ends up leaning more toward the side of heartwarming and nostalgic rather than annoyed and overwhelmed. Maybe that’s just me.
Today was Zoe’s graduation from middle school. Except “graduation” here means, they showed everyone’s name on the screen, along with their photo, or if their photo wasn’t available, the Yellowjacket school mascot. A couple kids read poems they had written and the principal shared some “words of wisdom.” (Clearly I’m really feeling the air quotes today). Zoe watched this “ceremony” on her laptop, in her bed (where she has done most of her classes this year) as shared by her 7th grade teacher. Randy and Zeke and I watched downstairs. We quietly cheered for the handful of kids who we recognized. When Zoe’s name came up we cheered louder and I went upstairs to give her a hug. She was nonplussed. She is now a rising high school freshman and she is still, as usual, in her pajamas in the middle of the afternoon. And I don’t blame her. She and her classmates missed out on the 8th grade dance, Kings Dominion trip, picnic, and of course a real life graduation ceremony. She never even met most of her teachers in person. She’s only been to school a handful of times to take standardized tests or to pick up supplies. Tomorrow she will go to pick up a t-shirt and a certificate. Anticlimactic is an understatement.
I keep trying to hype high school, and as Zoe will be fully vaccinated in less than a week, she will be able to enjoy as normal a summer as is possible in a country that is still unevenly recovering from a pandemic. She’s looking forward to the beach, and returning to sleepaway camp, and getting to see friends in person at school. But she still won’t get back what was lost this year. Yesterday we were at the pediatrician for her annual checkup. When the doctor asked about Zoe’s sleep habits and when she goes to bed, I just laughed. The doctor said she’s gotten that reaction from all the other parents of teenagers this year. Pretty much everything Zoe reported sounded pretty typical, the doctor said. Which I guess makes me a feel a little better, a reminder that I’m not the only parent who has struggled every day for the past 18 months trying to figure out how to keep their kids engaged while also cutting them an appropriate amount of slack. Of course I know I’m not the only one, because I have friends and they have all had similar if not identical struggles this year. But in the moment, it’s easy to think you’re the only one who doesn’t have a clue what to do, because at any moment the pressure is only on you to figure it out.
Meanwhile, this week I have also been trying to get my client work done. At the beginning of the school year, when we decided to homeschool Zeke for second grade, my husband asked if it would be too much for me to be Zeke’s teacher while also running my business. I said, “probably, but I feel like that’s what we have to do.” Now at the end of the school year I can confidently say, “absolutely, it was too much to do,” but I still feel like it was what we had to do. Hopefully Zeke learned something. None of my clients have fired me yet, so I guess I managed ok, although I know I could’ve stayed more on top of my work. When you’re homeschooling, you have to provide some sort of evidence at the end of the year that your kid learned something. This can be a portfolio evaluated by a qualified professional, or a standardized test. As much as I do not like standardized tests, I chose that option because it was a lot simpler. Since Zeke was in second grade, I gave him the second grade test in late April, when we had pretty much finished everything I planned to do and both of us were running out of steam. He did great. Then this week I learned that you’re supposed to give your kid the test for the grade they’re entering, not the one they finished. This is totally counterintuitive to me, but I wanted to do the right thing, so I ordered the 3rd grade test and gave it to him. The test is online. When I tried to access the scores, it kept telling me sections of the test were incomplete. Apparently Zeke raced through several sections (it’s a long test) so he could play Xbox sooner. So we sat down together and I watched him answer all the additional questions. This included the reading comprehension section. One of the reading passages was extremely confusing, even to me. So in the end his reading comprehension score was not great. In fact, it was much lower than his score in April. I emailed all the test results to the principal, who shared my confusion about why you would give the 3rd grade test to a second grader, but she assured me that she would put him in class with the right teacher who will presumably see that he reads well when they hear him read.
When I submitted Zeke’s test results to the school system, the person in charge of home instruction students wrote back and asked if Zeke would be continuing home instruction next year. I replied that no, I had already enrolled Zeke at his old elementary school for third grade. She responded, “how wonderful for your son!” I chose to interpret that as her pleasure that things would be back to normal for him, not her relief that he would not be forced to do homeschool with me for another year.
The rest of the time I’ve just been trying to balance Zeke’s screen time with other activities that he can do without me, reminding myself over and over that he starts camp next week and will be intellectually stimulated, have the chance to make friends, and run around outside. Since he hasn’t had to get up and get dressed at a particular time on a regular basis since last March, this also feels like the first week of school for him, even though it’s summer. To that end, I’ve been trying to buy him new sneakers. He has complained for a while that his are uncomfortable, so I assumed he had outgrown them. I’ve bought his last few pair of shoes without getting him measured because the only children’s shoe store I know about is 40 minutes away. We were all set to go there on Tuesday, when I discovered they are closed on Tuesday. We went to the mall, against my better judgement. Three different people in three different stores measured his feet and got three different sizes. We didn’t buy any shoes.
When Zoe and I set out for the pediatrician yesterday, we discovered our van had a flat tire. One $22 Lyft later, we made it to the doctor. I didn’t have time to deal with the tire until last night. At 9:30, the AAA driver arrived, and had me drive my van up the ramp of his tow truck. It felt like being on an amusement park ride but much scarier because you’re in your own car. He towed us up the street to the service station, and then had me back the van off the truck! A friend of mine lives in the apartment building behind the gas station, so I alerted her to come to her window and watch. Apparently she waved but I couldn’t see because I was trying not to drive my car off the side of a truck.
Thankfully, today the van is fixed. They changed the oil and replaced the wiper blades, and the total repair cost was less than I’ve ever paid for a car repair, so that’s something. I should have the words “silver linings” tattooed on my arm. But not in air quotes.
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Someday they’re going to publish scientific studies showing that living through the COVID-19 pandemic actually destroyed our brain cells, ravaged our mental health, and smashed our attention spans to bits. For example, I literally could not finish writing the previous sentence without pausing to play a turn in a word game, responding to a text, and checking the weather forecast.
I know a lot of people who have been clinically diagnosed with ADHD, but I feel right now like almost everyone I know is extraordinarily distracted. Is it because we’ve had enough of sitting inside our houses and our brains are yearning for something else to focus on besides what’s in front of us? Maybe it’s because we spend all day on various devices for work and for socializing and for shopping and for entertainment and we are conditioned to attend to the pings and the pop-ups? Perhaps it’s because we are so desperate for a change–for good news and for a definite end to this pandemic that we welcome that little burst of dopamine that comes from a potentially exciting distraction. Maybe this next ping or ding or buzz will be the one that turns everything around.
When this research comes out, those of us who have lived through the pandemic will roll our eyes and make snarky comments, like we do now when we see headlines like, “Excessive consumption of alcohol shown to contribute to bad decision making.” Because someone needed to study that to prove it was true?
I keep wondering how long we’ll be able to use the pandemic as an excuse for everything that is wrong with us. Because 14+ months of intermittent isolation from friends combined with constant interaction with family and unending uncertainty about the future is a legit excuse. But it’s getting so old.
Zeke commented recently that he feels like he can hardly remember life before the pandemic. He just turned eight, so more than one-eighth of his life has been lived in this bonkers environment. When he goes back to school in the fall for third grade, will it all be weird or will he have forgotten what the old normal was like? We keep hearing about how there’s no going back to normal, there’s just creating a new normal. But right now it seems impossible to build anything more elaborate or lasting than dinner for my family, which is hard enough.
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What is it called
when you’ve been
hiding inside
for so long
that when it’s safe
to emerge
you are reluctant
to embrace
your freedom
not quite
trusting
the invitation
What’s the word
for when you
can only
sit on a bench
watching people
who are probably
your friends
but whom you can’t
quite recognize
talk to each other
and laugh
you assume
they are smiling
too
What does it mean
when you’ve
forgotten
how to make
polite conversation
at a gathering of
more than
three people
when most
of the people
seem extraneous
and make you feel
awkward and
ill-equipped
for the world
How do you
follow the rules
when they are
constantly
being rewritten
how do you know
which ones to
obey and
which ones to
ignore
Where do you
find the strength
required
to survive
in the wild
when you’ve
become accustomed
to shuffling
back and forth
in your
designated
enclosure
littered with
all the evidence
of living
© Betsy Rosenblatt Rosso
April 2021
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I feel like my brain is producing a constant stream of reminders of everything I’m doing wrong or failing to do at all. Even if I take a walk or meditate or try breathing techniques, it all comes rushing back at me in waves as soon as I stop. I am neglecting all these things I’m supposed to do for my health, and I’m overwhelmed by them.
My kids want my undivided attention all the time. Zeke cries when I try to get him to do schoolwork he doesn’t want to do. Every day is a battle over what he’s willing to do. He is upstairs right now sobbing because I asked him to write something about a tv show we just watched about otters, which he loved, and which he was telling me all about. I just asked him to write down what he told me, but he refused.
I forget so many things. I don’t respond to emails. I completely space out on tasks I’m supposed to do. I write things down and don’t do them, or I forget to write them down. I can’t concentrate at all.
I can’t keep up with my text conversations with friends because they always seem to be texting when I am in the middle of both teaching Zeke and trying to do a work task.
My sleep is total chaos. The medicine I’m taking for my sleep disorder doesn’t always work. I often end up wiped out by evening and fall asleep at 5 or 6 for an hour or two. Sometimes I am awake until 2 or 3 or 4 because I can’t get my mind to calm down.
I am so tired of missing everything that we can’t do because of COVID. I am tired of being disappointed, and my kids being disappointed, because something we used to do, or we want to do isn’t possible. I am tired of not knowing when things will get better, or when my kids will be back in school every day.
I am tired of everyone being on top of each other all the time and having to relocate a million times a day to work. I am tired of battles about screen time and video games and social media.
I am tired of feeling like this. I know I am depressed, but I’m not so depressed that I can’t get out of bed or function. So maybe I’m not really depressed? Randy is being extra nice to me because he can see I’m struggling, which I appreciate. But I’m tired of struggling. Some days things go well, and I think I’m better, but then something doesn’t go well and I’m back to feeling overwhelmed and hopeless.
I feel like I can’t accomplish simple things anymore, like figuring out what to make for dinner.
I feel like since I’m trying to do everything at once, I am not doing anything well.
I’m tired of being worried about the potential health consequences of all of our actions.
I’m tired of grief.
I don’t want people to try to solve my problems or pity me. I know everyone is struggling and suffering. I wish I were more resilient. I’m tired of feeling pathetic.
One of the only things that brings me joy right now is making art. Now I have stacks of paper and canvases piling up around my house that I don’t know what to do with.
I just keep feeling like everything is too hard. I know my life is relatively easy, compared with many people around the world. We have a house, and enough food, and we can buy the things we need. None of us are sick and we haven’t lost anyone close to us from COVID. So why can’t I make myself feel better, do better, be better? It’s just too hard. And then I feel pathetic.
But…here’s some of my art.
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I had another night of so many dreams it felt like I had never slept. And in one of the dreams even, I had been wandering around my church, although it looked utterly unfamiliar and was as large and labyrinthine as an IKEA. I couldn’t find any friends. I was looking for a chair to sleep in and suddenly it was 9am and people came along to tell me it was time to go on the work trip we were there for. A long line of little girls with freshly washed hair, all wearing soccer uniforms, was in the hall beside me and I wondered what work trip they were going on. Or if I was supposed to be participating in a soccer game instead.
This dream was yet another in a series of church dreams in which things are not right. Most of them in recent months have featured our former minister having reinserted himself into the congregation and operating a shadow ministry–oblivious to or unmoved by the fact that we have a new minister now. In every dream I am furious that he is there but powerless to do anything about it, as he doesn’t seem to recognize me or acknowledge my existence. It’s like I’m a ghost. There’s no worse feeling for me.
Of course there are moments–and sometimes even days–of lightness and joy. But more often than not when I wake up in the morning I am reminded of everything we are not allowed to do anymore, or whatever it is I want to do that my children will refuse to do, or the things I know I should do but don’t have the energy to attempt. I am often crushed by the avalanche of things I do not know and cannot figure out.
Zeke is deep into Minecraft and building worlds teeming with ordinary and fantastical creatures. He’s creating universes where he can do whatever he wants, and exert control. Worlds where he doesn’t have to fight with me about doing his writing assignments. So far he’s winning. I downloaded a new curriculum yesterday which I will employ on Monday to try to turn things around.
Zoe’s imaginary worlds are slightly more realistic, but filled with exchanges with friends and strangers and altered by filters. She lives in the universes of TikTok and Snapchat and Instagram. Both of my kids have gained access to places where they are in charge, where they are creative, where they construct their own identities. Places where I could kind of follow, but I would get lost pretty quickly.
So I play Words with Friends and do New York Times crosswords on my phone. I can finish most of the puzzles on my own. I have the feeling that I hear some people feel about math, that it’s satisfying because there’s one right answer and if you follow the steps, you will find it. Of course for me that only happens with words. With Words with Friends, there are a million possible answers, but it’s pretty easy to find a decent one. Since the pandemic started I have lost many more games than I have won. I don’t care. I don’t spend ages trying to find the words with the highest point value. Maybe a few minutes at most. The action of playing is enough for me right now–the discovery of a word. Long ago I realized that my scores in Words with Friends are closely correlated with my mental health and mood. I know a lot of people only play to win–not just in silly apps, but in life. I don’t believe in that.
And I read. And read. And read. Last night I read a middle grade book–Roll with It–by Jamie Sumner. When I finished the book I thought it was thoughtful and charming and an interesting perspective on what it’s like to use a wheelchair and have cerebral palsy when you move to a small Oklahoma town. I opened the Goodreads app on my phone to mark that I’d read it and give it some stars, when I noticed some one-star reviews. I don’t usually read other people’s reviews, but I was surprised by the critique that popped up and I read many of them. Apparently a lot of readers who are people with disabilities found Roll with It ableist and deeply problematic, citing numerous examples of how the author depicted both people with CP and in wheelchairs, and people on the autism spectrum (represented by another character) using inappropriate language and stereotypes. While I was reading the book I kept thinking that the voice of the narrator was honest and realistic, but clearly I don’t know. The author of the book is the parent of a child with cerebral palsy, and presumably based some of the story on those experiences. One of the criticisms of the book was how often the narrator noticed her mom’s tired eyes, which centers the mom’s experience more than the child’s. While I was reading the book, I appreciated those observations because I, too, am a tired mom. But I get it now that the story of the girl shouldn’t have to dwell on the effects of her disability on her mom. That is not her fault. So after reading the reviews I felt like a jerk for blithely enjoying the book and not thinking too hard about how it might seem to a person with a disability. I realized I was demonstrating able-bodied privilege all over the place. I understand that it’s not fair of me to escape into someone else’s trauma. I am holding my breath while I walk the line between wanting to learn about and from other people’s experiences and wallowing in my privilege. Even the forgiving net beneath me is a product of my privilege.
There is so much to learn. So much.
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At one point today I was lying in Zeke’s bottom bunk, still in my pajamas, reading sections of his graphic novel about plagues so I could help him sketch out the script for the video I asked him to make to demonstrate what he’d learned. When this book was written in 2017 the author and publisher probably had no idea we would actually be LIVING THROUGH A PLAGUE just a few years in the future.
I realized at the time that lying in bed was probably not the best place to be to teach, but I couldn’t seem to get myself together to get up. It was also pouring down rain and seemed to be just another day living in COVID world and waiting to find out if the current president would be staging a coup to stay in power or would admit that he’d lost the election.
So I was in a pretty bad mood for most of the day.
Then I stormed out of the house.
To go to T-Mobile.
It wasn’t particularly exciting or dramatic but I needed to get some paperwork sorted out and it was an excuse to leave the house.
Even though it’s been an oddly 75-degree November so far, I keep thinking about what we’re going to do over the winter when the weather is terrible and we are cooped up in the house and we can’t go to any indoor play spaces or movies or, um, ANYWHERE INSIDE THAT’S FUN AND DIVERTING AND WHERE KIDS CAN BLOW OFF STEAM.
But we’re not there yet, and perhaps thanks to climate change it will be 75 degrees all winter long!
Things got better this evening. I signed up for Home Chef–a new meal kit delivery service and the first box arrived today. Tonight I made Teriyaki Chicken Thigh Tacos and they were delicious and both of my children ate two tacos! It is so hard to find meals that I can cook and everyone can eat and that my kids actually like. So far two thumbs up for Home Chef.
After dinner Zoe asked to go on a walk with me. The rain had more or less stopped and we walked two and a half miles and had a good conversation. Teenagers aren’t always forthcoming with their time or talk.
I felt so energized by our walk and so frustrated by the lethargy and anxiety that have characterized the past nine months that I decided to start Noom, a wellness app that uses behavioral therapy to help you eat healthier and take better care of your body. I subscribed to EvolveAll.tv so I’ll have some workouts to do at home. Man, I really miss playing soccer. But that’s not an option right now.
I will be the first to admit that I am not always good with follow through. But I am hopeful that Noom will stick and some people will do the EvolveAll workouts in solidarity with me and maybe I won’t fall into the abyss this winter. None of this will make teaching homeschool while working any easier. But maybe I’ll have something to hold onto so I’m less tempted to stay in bed while I ride out the plague.
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I feel so much lighter now.
I just delivered a bag of fabric scraps and a bag of scarves, both of which were FG’s, to members of my neighborhood Buy Nothing Group who understand how special FG was and promised to put her things to good use. Both of these women are without cars, so they were particularly grateful that I offered to deliver the bags, even though people usually pick up your Buy Nothing items when you post them on Facebook. I have been carrying these bags around in the trunk of my car for months. They are the last of many more bags of fabric, craft supplies, and assorted other treasures that FG sent home with me from her house over the past year.
Although FG was not a particularly sophisticated social media user (beyond lurking on Facebook and being aware at all times of what I was up to), I know she would have liked Buy Nothing. She and my mom inherited their parents’ habit of saving anything that might ever prove useful, as well as their generosity in sharing what they had with others. FG and my mom–and FG’s daughter, my cousin Melissa–have exemplified the adage, “one person’s trash in another person’s treasure.” Although none of them quite approached the collection and transformation of trash in the same way, all of them have always been creative.
I am usually trying to get rid of things and declutter our house, especially since there’s a steady flow of incoming items. And it is so much fun to see that the Buy Nothing community is thrilled to find new and creative uses for my unwanted stuff. I don’t personally know most of the people in the group, but I’ve gotten to know some of them simply through the exchange of goods and the stories behind them. And I have learned that these people are unfailingly kind and generous. One of my favorites–who I have actually had the pleasure of meeting in person–is a kindness activist who consistently goes above and beyond to help others. She had a kindness yard sale this summer–people (including me of course) donated all kinds of crazy junk and she “sold” it to customers for whatever price they wanted to pay. She raised $8000+ and she’s using every penny to spread kindness to others in our community. She and lots of other folks in our neighborhood helped this family build a rainbow schoolhouse for their daughter. How cool is that?
Last night my church held an (online) Remembrance Vespers service. You might not realize that you need a good opportunity to sit and cry about the people you love who are gone, but sometimes you do. So many people have told me to “take time to grieve” the loss of FG. Honestly I don’t know how that works. I think about her all the time. I struggle with impulses to do or make things that remind me of her, but of course I’m reminded of her anyway whether I do them or not. I really want to make chicken salad, but I always called her when I made it for a reminder of the family recipe or maybe just for moral support. I think I am afraid I will cry in the chicken salad and then everyone who eats it will cry, like in Like Water for Chocolate.
My lightness also comes from getting a haircut and highlights this afternoon. Why anxiety makes me want to get rid of all my hair, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s related to the idea of “I want to tear my hair out.” Which I don’t want to do, because that would hurt. Whereas getting a haircut feels wonderful. There was a new shampooer at my salon who gifted me with a fabulous head massage. I haven’t had highlights in ages because it’s expensive to maintain and just seems cumbersome. But I decided the world is such a disaster right now that I needed a lift that brightening my curls could offer.
While I was getting my shampoo, I did not think about politics for one second. I only thought about how that woman’s hands felt on my head and how lovely the shampoo smelled. While I was getting my highlights I started a novel that my minister recommended.
I did talk about the election with Adil, my stylist, because we always talk about what’s going on. We commiserated and tried to reassure each other that we’ll get through this and that our country has had enough madness and we’re going to turn things around. Right?
I can sense how everyone around me is holding their breath. Even though I wanted to turn over and go back to sleep when my alarm went off this morning, I turned on zoom and logged into my yoga class. And of course I was glad I did. Why as humans do we need to be reminded so often to take a deep breath? And another? And another? Or is that just me? Anyway I am thankful for the reminder. My friends and I remind each other that it’s perfectly fine to have a really low bar right now for what we can accomplish or deal with. We are all operating at considerably less than 100%. But that’s ok. We will ramp back up again someday. For now we can be satisfied with simply surviving and remembering to take another deep breath.
You Ask a Lot of Questions 