Dear 2020...don't let the door hit you...

Dear 2020, 

Well. What a difference a year makes, eh?

• A year ago, I was all about “the end of a decade and the beginning of a decade” jokes.

• A year ago, I was worried about the state of the world, but felt distant and safe from where I sat.

• A year ago, I felt at peace with myself in a way I hadn’t before and felt so fortunate to feel that way.

• A year ago, I was working out with others in a space that I loved and doing things with my body that I could hardly imagine doing.

• A year ago, I felt safe and happy around my bustling school and loved that feeling of belonging that came with being part of a community.

• A year ago, there were gross inequities in education across our country, lack of technology that was a given for others, but only a few really talked about it.

• A year ago, people could pretend that civil rights battles were a thing of the past, even though deep down they probably knew better.

• A year ago, a global pandemic was the stuff of horror movies.

• A year ago, it would have been laughable to think that the idea of protecting fellow citizens in the name of public health was something that could be politicized in such a way that people would deny there was anything wrong, or worse, use a laughing emoji as a reaction to a post about a fellow countryman’s death.

How was I to know what you had in store for us all?  In my world, as excited as I was to welcome you, by the end of the very first day, I was ready to send you back. Fear and trauma in my own family gave way to grief and sadness for friends, big losses in my community, and finally so much loss, anger and anxiety in the world. I’m honestly not sure rehashing the year is the direction I want to take, since just about every other person who has something to say today is already doing that. Instead, more and more lately, I can’t help but think there’s a reason we all (collectively) have experienced this hard year together. 

Brene Brown refers to the big events that people experience together as “collective effervescence,” an “experience of connection, communal emotion, and a ‘sensation of sacredness’ that happens when we are a part of something bigger than us.” She writes that she got the term from a Dutch social scientist and ever since I read it a few years ago, it’s stayed with me and I come back to it. A lot. Usually thinking of big, happy events. A great rock concert attended as a teen and finding out that a current friend was there that night, too. The day it snowed in Miami. The day your team won the big championship (looking at you, '72 Dolphins). But sad ones, too. 9/11. The Challenger explosion. The day John Lennon died. And now, 2020. 

There has to be a reason, or a lesson, or even a moral to this crazy story. So many times this year, I’ve thought, “No. Seriously…this isn’t really happening. Right?” And then, of course, “Oh. Yes. It is.” Maybe it was the message to slow down. Maybe it was that we need to take a time-out and figure out what our priorities are, as individuals, as communities, as a country, as a world. Maybe we’re supposed to fix the things that are wrong. Maybe we’ll never really know because we’re too busy fighting. With each other. With the messenger. With the message.

2020, when I look back at you, I know that part of your lasting mark will be the memory of loss, tears shed and anxiety. The year we said goodbye to our beloved dog, the year of "virtual" graduations and everything else. The year of curbside pickup and words we'd all probably prefer never to hear again (looking at you, Unprecedented, pod, pivot and hoax). 

But I don't think that tells the whole story. I think your legacy will also be the beauty noticed in everyday things. A gorgeous sunrise on an early morning walk, or an equally as gorgeous sunset on a different day’s later walk. Cooking dinner at home, night, after night, after night. People met in my neighborhood during daily walks; different “regulars” depending on time of day, most ready with a wave and "Hello." And when you stop seeing someone, having a little tug of concern, even if you don’t know them well enough to check on them. A global explosion of creative expression and compassion in a world that so often feels less than kind.

I’ll look back on you as the year you almost took my love from me, but then didn't, and we found new ways to live and be grateful for what we have; the year you brought my immediate family together, under one roof, for a time. At a time when, while getting used to and sort of digging the empty nest, having us all together felt safe and right and like a gift that was most unexpected. Realizing, as an extrovert, that I might actually just prefer being at home with my people and that might not be a terrible thing. And really, maybe the biggest take away for me is how much the things I need the most, the things that sustain me the most, have been right in front of me all along. And I didn’t have to get stuck in a twister and go on a journey to a strange land with a scarecrow, tin man and lion to figure it out.

I don’t know what your successor has on tap for us. I certainly don’t harbor any illusion that 2021 will magically put us in a happy place where we’re all singing “Kumbaya” together. I’ve spent enough time deep in thought over  the past 10 months, trying to imagine how others in past eras responded to their own hard times. They pushed through, they found the strength and courage to do the tough things. And that’s what I hope we can do, too. 

Happy New Year, 2020...don't let the door hit you on the way out!

Love,

Jen

Halftime for 2020

December 31, 2019. I was all about celebrating the “lasts” of the decade, reminiscing about the tremendous amount of change we’d undergone through the 2010’s and looking forward to 2020 and the “firsts” that a new decade had in store. Little could I have imagined. 

Today, we are six months into 2020 and if someone had given me a hint of what was to come, I’d have laughed at the sheer audacity one would have to make some of this stuff up. It wasn’t like there was a gradual…let’s make this year a test of the average person’s strength and meddle…thing that happened. No. We jumped right in and everything changed on the first night of the year as we were thrust into a new world of scary medical stuff. And before I go any further, I am incredibly thankful for the emergency medical people at our local hospital, as well as the cardiac care staff at the big city hospital where we went. Things could have taken  a drastically different turn that night and I will forever be grateful that they didn’t. I know too many who have undergone extreme pain and loss and sorrow in the past six months and I think about them every single day.

But as the news ramped up in those first few weeks of this year, stories of raging brush fires in Australia, insect infestations, blizzards and then tornadoes were only part of it. Because when that new virus showed up on the news, it didn’t really register as a real threat for most of us. Until it did. And by then, it was pretty much too late. 

March 13, 2020, a Friday the 13th, by the way, if you’re a superstitious type. To me, this is the day that will live on as the one where everything changed. When I left work that day knowing that school was going to be shut down for the next few weeks, I never would have imagined that “the next few weeks” would last until the end of the school year and into the summer and in some way into the next year. 

In the weeks and months that’ve followed, the thing I wonder most is, “What would I have done differently if I’d known I wouldn’t see my students or the majority of my friends and coworkers in person again?” I’m not a terribly “huggy” person, but I would have hugged my friends goodbye. Tightly, like the kind of hug where you might hold on for just an awkward second too long. I would have looked them in the eyes as they spoke to me in those last few days and listened. Hard. And been more present. I was working on a big deadline that week, and was in my head a lot of the time. Knowing what I know right now, I’d have gotten out of my head and enjoyed the exact moments that I was running around trying to document to meet that deadline.

Back then, I wrote in a post that if Ma Ingalls could manage life on a prairie and tend to people with yellow fever and still manage her farm chores, then I could certainly handle what was to come in my suburban town. And I can. And I have, but it sure hasn’t been easy. Don’t get me wrong…there are parts of this that I’ve actually loved. The slowed down lifestyle, the time with my immediate family. In what other recent time has empty nester parents suddenly been given back their kids for a little while? This time with our kids has been a great gift. But I also know that it’s hard on them and they want…they need…to move on and into their actual adult lives.The emotional ups and downs have been hard on everyone.  

The world has changed in so many unimaginable ways in this new decade. In April, I wrote about how I hoped we could take the good parts of our quarantine lives and leave behind the bad as part of our “new normal.” But that was before the term “new normal” was hijacked and turned into something ugly and weaponized. We’ve moved from the quiet, peaceful part of quarantine to the restless, angry part of it. We’ve watched in horror as 126,000 of our fellow Americans have died from this virus, and yet some of us haven’t been willing to do the simple things needed to help slow the spread. Wear a mask, stay home when possible, keep our distance from others. The Internet is filled with awful pictures and video of people behaving horribly in the name of “their rights” while at the same time disregarding the rights of others. Stop looking for conspiracies where there are none and just do the right thing.

But here’s the other thing. In the midst of this pandemic and all that has gone with it, we’ve finally been forced to take a long, hard look at our racial past and the awful mistakes that were made along the way that today still impact the lives of fellow human beings and Americans. And when I say things like, “I just wish we could get back to the way things used to be,” I recognize the privilege that lies behind a statement like that. My “the way things used to be” is another person’s time of fear, anger or sadness over a lifetime of mistreatment or a history told wrong. And we have so much work to do to find a way to come together and make things right.

20, 30, or even 50 years from now. What will they say about this period in history? What will today’s kids tell their own kids or grandkids about the “Year of the Pandemic?” Will they look at us and marvel at our strength and courage during a really scary time? Will they look at us with scorn because half of us refused to do even the bare minimum to help make things better as part of a political game of wills? Will they change the story to make us look better or worse than we do right now? The first half of the first year of the decade of the 20’s is over. But the second half starts today and that story hasn’t been written yet. We all have the power to control and write the story that should be written. Let’s get to it.

A New Normal?

This started out as a post about loneliness. Because I can’t imagine that my feelings of loneliness, even in a house full of human beings and never actually being alone as we’re quarantined, are unique to me. Or the crushing sadness I feel for people who are truly alone right now. My mother, a widow, alone, unable to get together with her friends. My friend’s mom, also a widow, also alone. Another friend’s mom, in a nursing home. How do you explain to someone with dementia why no one is coming to visit them anymore? That kind of loneliness is gut wrenching to imagine. Sick people dropped off at a hospital’s emergency room, left alone in the hospital as their loved ones go home to worry. Alone. Missing my own friends so much it feels suffocating at times, but not really knowing how to connect the way I want, so avoiding more than I should. Thinking of kids who are missing their own friends. Yet, I have  no solution and I’m not sure I have anything insightful to say about it other than to acknowledge that I have these feelings and you probably do too and they don’t really feel great.

So instead it became a post about “the new normal.” On the first night of this year (in what feels like another lifetime ago), my husband suffered a heart attack, sudden cardiac arrest and then later had open heart surgery. In the weeks that followed, I was told, “It’ll be okay, you’ll find your new normal.” And I really wasn’t sure what that looked like, but I guess as we developed new habits and routines, we kind of did. And now, just 12 short weeks later, we’re all trying to find “our new normal” in the face of a global pandemic. Characters in books, after going through some major life change, often “find their new normal.” But truthfully? I don’t really want a new normal, I want my old normal back. I want my comfortable normal from December 31st, 2019 or even March 13th, 2020 back. A normal that wasn’t filled with fear or sadness or loneliness. I had it pretty sweet…mostly empty nester learning how to maneuver life with my husband in the “kids done or almost done with college mode.” We would go out to eat, travel a little, laugh a lot, we had routines. But as Mick so eloquently said, “You can’t always get what you want,” and that sure seems to be the case with this. So what is our new normal? What does that even mean? How do we know when we’re there? Do we stay there? Is that it? We fall into new routines. Are the routines and rhythms of a household in isolation really the new normal?

But that’s not even what this post is about. What this post is actually about, or what’s on my mind right now, is this: What happens when we’re done doing what we’re doing right now? So much has changed. And so quickly. We’ve learned new ways to do our jobs. New ways to do school. New ways to connect. New ways to patronize restaurants. New ways to interact with our families. New ways to slow down. New ways to be. New ways to think. We’ve learned that we can get by without so many things. We’ve learned that in the face of scary, challenging stuff, we can have days where we’re productive and things feel, dare I say, “normal,” and we can have days where we feel off and not so productive and we’ve learned that both are okay. We’ve learned that funny memes are sometimes just the thing to get us through hard days and the upside to social media is that it can help us not feel as alone as we might otherwise feel.

But when the stay at home orders are lifted and the pandemic fears have died down, what happens? I mean, after we do the things we've missed, like get a haircut or go for coffee with a friend. Do we go right back to the way things were? Does the hustle and bustle of LBC (Life Before Covid) ramp right back up? This virus has taken so much from so many: loved ones, jobs, health, security, human connection. And at the same time, it’s given much: fear, yes, but also time to think, time with family that felt like it had been lost forever, time to breathe, new ways to connect, time to reflect on what really matters, time to get outside. How do we take the good parts of now and combine them with the good parts of LBC? Do the calls and need for human connection and kindness stick?

Maybe this post is about the “new normal,” after all. Because it seems like the new normal can, no, should, include parts of the old normal. The smell of freshly cut grass on a pretty spring day. A stunning full moon on a clear night. A song on your playlist that makes you smile; or a song that makes you cry. That feels normal. And right. And good. Making dinner. Night, after night, after night (this, is definitely new for me!). Seeing a little girl run through a sprinkler in a bathing suit while holding a polka dotted umbrella and squealing with laughter. Maybe the two normals eventually morph into something that just feels like life is moving forward. Maybe not the way we intended, but still in a forward motion and it becomes this thing that we all experienced and will never forget and that will shape our futures in a way that we really can’t imagine, yet.

And Then There Were None (At Home, That Is)

Some rambling thoughts upon taking my son to college this weekend...

I’m not new to this game of taking a child to college. I’ve done it one time before, which makes me a veteran college mom. Two years ago, the first time I took one off to college for the first time, I felt like there was so much I needed to tell my older son...stuff that he needed to know right that second. For whatever reason, the most important thing the day before we left to take him was that I hadn’t taught him how to iron, so I made him learn how to iron.  As far as I know, he hasn’t ironed since.  

Two years later, we’re here. Though, this time, it seems I saved all the advice giving for the last day. A day where we were packing, joking, eating obscene amounts of unhealthy food together (looking at you Mini Vermonster), was also the day that I decided it was time to impart all my words of wisdom to him.  And impart, I did.  In conversation, in jokes, in a heartfelt email.  But really, there’s not much I felt the need to tell him (or his brother, for that matter), that hasn’t been said in the past.  Yes, there are laundry tips, housekeeping tips and organization tips, but the lessons they need and should be leaving with should really be the lessons they were getting from us all along, right?  Be kind.  Be true to yourself. Take care of yourself. Work hard. Do your best. Call home. Did I miss anything?  

And now, it’s happened.  This moment that has been looming over us for the better part of the past year, happened today.  I’ve looked at it with excitement, I’ve looked at it with gloom, I’ve looked at it with trepidation and I’ve looked at it with an insane amount of pride that my son knew exactly what he wanted and went for it with the same gusto he’s had for pretty much every other thing he’s wanted to accomplish so far in his 18 years. 

I have read dozens of articles, blog posts, memes and pieces of advice about leaving our kids at college.  I know no less than 120 other moms in the same place we are this weekend...I’ve scrolled through their drop off pictures (and posted our own) on my Facebook feed and realize now that, while my house has a sense of emptiness that it’s never had before, this is the moment we’ve been building toward since, well, since having kids.  They aren’t meant to stay with us forever….I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t even like each other very much if we kept that same mother/child relationship well into their adulthood, because they’re suppose to go off, with baby steps, spread their wings and develop their own lives with the hope that the lessons we’ve passed on stick.  The good ones, at least.  In good ways.

Even President James Garfield had these same sorts of rambling thoughts in 1879 when he wrote of taking his own children off to school, “It will require no little self-sacrifice on my part to see and aid them in the work of separating these precious home ties. I begin to see how it is that parents come to regard children as their own decorations, given for their own selfish comfort. The severe lesson must be learned that they are given to go alone--to leave the parent nest and fly to trees of their own seeking."

I remember both of my kids’ first days of kindergarten as if they were just yesterday.  I cried big as the bus pulled away with my oldest, his brother in my arms crying along with me that he wanted to go too.  I was teary when I dropped off my youngest a few years later, but he was ready. He was ready then and he’s ready now.  I’ve worked at his school either as a volunteer or as a teacher since he was in preschool.  This year will be the first time in his school life that we aren’t just down the hall from each other.  That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?  But he's ready. His look of confidence upon arriving on campus yesterday was reassuring and I know he's going to be fine.

So, yes...tonight, I am a little bit sad.  And yes, I miss him already. And ice cream did help while we were driving home (as it usually does).  But I am not permanently sad.  This is a temporary loss.  A loss of a past, perhaps a loss of the childhood that was.  Knowing that others are dealing with real loss right now probably helps put this transition of sending our youngest off to college into a different kind of perspective.  And what I’m starting to realize is that sending a young  adult to college is really not the end of being a parent, it’s the beginning of being a different kind of parent.  

And tonight, we are no longer "empty nesters in training," we are full on "empty nesters."