Random Quarantine Thoughts (pt. 1)

Random Quarantine Thoughts (pt. 1)

Heavy

I know I’m not alone when I think of this time we’ve been quarantining to say that it’s like this crazy roller coaster of emotions. I wrote about it early on here. One day, it’s all, “This isn’t bad. I have time to do my work and read my book and enjoy my family and cook dinner and go for a walk and play some music and, and, and.” Other days, it’s anxiety central, and you know the best thing to do is try to do some of the healthy stuff you do on the good days and stay off social media and turn off the news for a little while and even reach out to someone to talk (if your anxiety doesn’t stop you from doing that). 

And other days are just heavy. And lonely feeling. And sad. Rightly or wrongly, I keep this website  as an open tab on my computer and check it daily. When the president rarely expresses any kind of compassion for the loss of life during his daily “press briefings,” I shake my head in disbelief. The number goes up by the thousands every single day. Yesterday morning it was just over 45,000. Today it is just under 48,000. Yes, 84,000 have recovered. But that means just under 48,000 families are grieving the loss of someone right this minute due to this virus, even while 84,000 are celebrating recovery. You can be relieved and sad and realistic all at the same time. Loss of life is loss of life. And while just under 48,000 have died from this in two months, that’s just 10,000 less than the number of US soldiers that died in Vietnam, a conflict that lasted almost two decades. And at the same time, there are so many other families struggling and in pain and dealing with loss, too. Cancer, car crashes, families making end of life decisions for loved ones due to old age, families losing loved ones due to addiction, suicide, weather disasters and on and on. We do what we can to manage these feelings of heaviness, but man, these days are definitely the hard ones.

View from my window

I found a group on Facebook this week called “View from My Window” and it's filled with photos taken from all

"View from my window"

around the world of peoples’ views from a window in their homes. These photos are lovely. And captivating. Photos of far off places I’ve not yet visited, some of which I hope to one day. Photos from cities and towns in the US that I’ve never been to and some that I have been to where the scene is familiar or something I've seen in person before.

And as I look at these photos, I realize that from where my temporary work desk is set up in my bedroom, I have spent a good deal of time looking out my own window lately, as well. The edge of our flag waving in spring breezes catches my eye many times during my Zoom classes. The green of the leaves on the trees in our front yard and across the street. The sounds of birds singing or children out for a social distancing morning run with their moms as they head up the street. They all vie for my attention and help distract me with a reminder that there's beauty in our own worlds, too. We’ve lived in our house for 18 years and I think I’ve looked out my bedroom window a handful of times before this.

Fading

Fading fake tattoo.

See my “fake” tattoo? My workout friends and I had these made for photos as part of a “virtual April Fool’s gag,” a gag that had been planned weeks before this began, but it has become a fairly big piece of symbolism for me during our quarantine. It pops into my line of vision while I’m working out at home or other random times during the day. Sometimes, I do a double take when I see it because I forget it’s there, but it makes me happy every time I notice it. It reminds me of: 1) friends I adore that I miss seeing in person so much, 2) the big parts of LBC that I miss, 3) that I have strength and can be strong in the face of hard and scary things.

It’s been just over three weeks since I applied the “tattoo,” and as it’s fading now, that feels fairly symbolic, too. I: 1) worry that so much time away from the things that I love will fade not just in my memory, but will be hard to recover when we start venturing out again, 2) that the good vibes and all the goodness we saw at the beginning of this crisis are starting to fade away, 3) that the divisiveness that is politically motivated and may be advantageous for some, is really incredibly damaging to the rest of us and that the country we grew up knowing and loving is fading away and what can we do to protect it and bring it back? 

"In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers." (Mr. Rogers)

Listen to those messages...

This getting older thing. It’s not for sissies. And sometimes it’s tiring. 

Maybe you’re reflecting on your past and ruminating on the bad stuff that’s happened to you. Trauma is tricky. And it’s real.  And it has a way of eating away at you even when you think you’ve handled it all just fine. And maybe you’re letting it have more power over you than you ought to and maybe you’re not really using the tools you’ve amassed to help you manage in this moment because maybe you just need or want to be sad right now. 

Maybe the ever changing but hardly improving news cycle with stories of “that awful thing that person in Washington said or Tweeted today,” or another mass shooting with lots of outrage and little change, or another story of a person in power doing something awful to many children and how it was brushed aside for years has finally brought you to your knees to the point where you just feel small or helpless and wonder how can we even begin to fix this?

Maybe the aches and pains of aging are fighting against your desire for a healthy body and fitness routine by shouting constant reminders at you that you’re not really as young as you wish you were and maybe you should have started doing this a long time ago. 

Or maybe it’s that your kids are moving on and you sometimes miss the parts of parenting that seemed so hard back in those days and you sometimes wish someone was sitting in their booster in your back seat asking nonsensical questions when all you wanted was a moment of silence.  “I’d be happy to hear that voice,” you think, “And answer whatever questions he wants to ask and I’d be so patient, too!”

But with all of that, you also know you have a pretty sweet life and it sure seems like there are times when the universe conspires to help (make) you hear messages you probably need to hear in this moment. “Listen. I’m trying to tell you something,” it says.

But you’re not really listening. Or not ready to hear. Or something. 

And then, one day you hear the words your fitness instructor is saying differently than you may have heard them on a different day as she speaks of privilege. That the movement our bodies give us is a privilege that not everyone has. We won’t always have it. What are we doing to nurture ourselves and keep our strength and ability to move for as long as possible? And when you hear that, you say, “Oh.“ Because you realize she might be speaking to you and this is probably something you’ve taken for granted.

And then you go to a talk by self-proclaimed “happiness” gurus and you have a night of awesome belly laughs with a good friend.

Or spend a weekend in the mountains, enjoying the cooler air, fall leaves, a lovely hike and a cozy fire.

Or you come up with a great idea at work that you can actually pull off and the excitement from thinking about it has you energized in a way you haven’t felt in awhile.

Or you see a beautiful rainbow, not once, but twice, on the way home.

Or the reminders from friends or spouses that they are there for you. That you’re enough. That you’re not weak. 

The highs and lows that come, sometimes all in one day, sometimes over the course of a week or a month, all come for a reason. And we’re sent these messages that we should probably pay better attention to (in the name of “self-care”)…they aren’t just platitudes or affirmations. They should be reminders: I am strong enough. I am worth it. I am good enough. And so are  you. Now, I just need to listen.

18 Things I Learned (or Relearned) in 2018

18 Things I Learned (or Relearned) in 2018

1. There really is never not a good time for red shoes.  
2. Everyone has a story…some good, some bad. Taking time to learn others’ stories is more important now than ever before.
3. Standing up for what’s right is not always easy, but always the right way to go.
4. Taking breaks from the news, or at least limiting it in some ways, while finding healthy ways to handle it, is not a bad way to go.
5. Parenting young adults is different and challenging in its own right, and means you have to find new ways to continue old and start new traditions. But it’s also really cool to watch them launch into their own lives and see them figure things out for themselves.
6. The easy solution is not always (usually) the best solution.
   
7. Trying new things is a good idea at any age.
8. I am so lucky to have a strong community to work out in. 
9. And also a good accountability partner. I can’t imagine that I’d have stuck with it without her. 
10. Sometimes, no matter how much you want to achieve a goal, factors outside your control might conspire to stop you (or at least slow you down). 
11. When you think you just can’t do one more of something, you probably can.
12. I am incredibly good at being lazy, but being active and getting regular exercise makes me a much better person.
13. There’s nothing quite like spending an entire day curled up on a chair with your dog and a good book.
14. Just wanting something to happen isn’t really enough. Wanting it enough to make it happen gives it more of a chance of actually happening. 
15. I’m stronger than I think I am, but not really as strong as I’d like to be. 
16. Facing your past can be hard. Really hard. And often harder than you want it to be. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.
17. Shoulders are really important and do so much more for us than we realize or give them credit for. They deserve some serious props for the many things they do for us.
18. Taking time to reflect and be thankful for the things we have, particularly family, friends, pets, jobs, safe home, food to eat, good health, etc, etc, is important any time…not just at the beginning of a new year.

Life Goes On

I know I've said it before, but I am really not a great blogger.  I'm not even sure I feel right calling myself one.  I just have a site that I occasionally write on when I feel the need to write.  I read blogs of people who are true bloggers.  I'm not sure if I am able to open myself up in that way, either online or even in a journal, because the truth is, the way I have kept this blog is pretty much exactly the way I have journaled in my lifetime. And the funny thing is that I am a) a decent enough writer and b) reflective enough that I have enough to say. So I'm not sure why I don't write more often.

And what brought me back to my blog this week (for the first time since 2011) is the amount of reflecting I have been doing this monumental week of my older son's high school graduation.  The rational part of me says that the milestone that comes with your graduating child is exactly as life should be.  We were never meant to have our kids with us forever. We had kids in order for them to grow up and go out and follow their live's paths.  But it's really hard to be rational, isn't it?  I long for the days where I was begging my son to go off and play on his own (because I was worried that he was too dependent on me).  If those days were here, I promise I'd play with him and let him boss me around and tell me what to do. If those days were here, I'd read the Truck Book...AGAIN!  and I'd do it without a rolled eye or sigh.  If those days were here, I'd play Uncle Wiggly and not get mad at him for being too competitive.  I would do it all and I'd do it without complaint.

We are full of advice for graduating seniors.  I wrote my son a letter full of important words of wisdom and the words that I hadn't told him but needed him to hear from me and gave it to him on Graduation Day. But where is the advice for the mom of the graduating senior?  How to enjoy the time you have left before they leave.  How to not spend all your time worrying because they aren't home as much since they want to be with their friends and you just want to know they are home and safe in their bed at night.  How to be really excited for this next leg of their lives' journeys and mean it.   How to not argue with them and their sloppy ways or how to just be and prepare for moving onto this next phase of their lives. Or even how to figure out what your (and your husband's) path is when he (and in a few years his brother) are both out of the house and onto their adult lives. These are the things we moms need to know and I'm hopeful that since I know many who are in the same boat with me right now, we will figure them out together.

Taking Friendship To the Next Level

My day started with the utmost in embarrassing situations. At 8:50, I was sitting in our school's little theater, strumming my guitar, as families came in to get ready for their first graders' performance, at which I was going to accompany them on two songs. As I was sitting there, I kept smelling something awful. "What IS that?" I mumbled and started looking around for the source. I looked down and noticed a piece of pine straw stuck to the bottom of my sandal. I had a sense for what the smell was then, but checked anyway and sure enough, I'd stepped in poop. I was thinking dog poop, but realized that I hadn't smelled it in the car, so it must have happened once at school, so it may have been goose poop.

Either way, there I was, minutes before a performance and not sure what to do. So I ran out to get outside quickly. At the same time, my son came barreling out of his Art classroom upset because he'd gotten ink on his shorts. "So?" I said in my most mature mom voice, "I have poo on my shoe!" As I got to the door, I heard him tell his class the exciting news.

I got some paper towel, tried to scrub it off, dunked it in a puddle outside for a minute, and then just left them sitting outside as I walked back in, barefoot. My friend was doing some work in the hall and I told her what had happened and she said she'd clean them. I told her that she really didn't need to do that.

I felt like the epitome of professionalism as I walked back into the theater with nothing on my feet. I even heard a younger sibling point out to her mom that "that lady had no shoes." Thankfully, the play was about the rain forest and taking care of our planet, so I was just being "earthy" and fit right in!

After the show had ended, I went back out to take care of my shoes, when my friend told me that my shoes were all clean and sitting right at the door to the theater. I was blown away. To me, that qualified as a really good friend thing to do. In my mind, I'm not sure I'd do that for another person, but my sister assured me that I would if I felt like that person was in a bind. Maybe, but it made me think of the old Seinfeld episode about new friendship with Keith Hernandez. "What? He asked you to help him move?? You just met the guy!" So thank you, Chris!

Oh, not sure if there's much more tear inducing than a bunch of first graders singing "What a Wonderful World," unless it's a bunch of first graders singing "What a Wonderful World" while they sign it. Great stuff!