if you don’t feel overwhelmed right now – and you are in the united states – than you are – clearly – an anomaly.
we pulled up behind this car at a stoplight. the “#notnormal” bumpersticker got my attention.
nothing seems normal. nothing IS normal.
we – in this country – are facing down the collapse of everything we have known, understood, loved.
it is utter madness. crazy-deranged. grotesquely-mean. sociopathic.
i am resisting. i am trying to resist. and i am failing.
i am resisting fear. i am resisting depression. i am resisting confusion. i am resisting horror. i am resisting rage. i am resisting the madness.
i am trying to resist fear. i am trying to resist depression. i am trying to resist confusion. i am trying to resist horror. i am trying to resist rage. i am trying to resist the madness.
i am failing at resisting fear. i am failing to resist depression. i am failing to resist confusion. i am failing to resist horror. i am failing to resist rage. i am failing to resist the madness.
all of it. a melting pot of fear, depression, confusion, horror, rage, madness and – yes – resistance.
because this is all so exponentially not normal.
we – all the rest of us mortals – are all trying to breathe one breath at a time. in and out. inhale. exhale.
and we – each in our own way – resist the madness.
i broke my mom’s salad bowl last night. it wasn’t fancy; it was a simple glass bowl, shaped in the letter v. but i loved using it for salads and quinoa tabouli and all kinds of fruit. it slipped from my grasp in the sink and, despite my best efforts at rescue, broke in two large pieces. i was instantly saddened, not because i get upset when things break, but because it was my sweet momma’s and using it was a silken connected tie.
we were on i-70 driving across denver and stuck in traffic. we played leap-frog with several vehicles as we inched forward. one of them had a sticker that read “extreme rightwing” and another had this sticker “humankind. be both.” i am betting you can guess the one with which i felt in alignment. i wanted to roll down big red’s window further than i already had it and call out the window, “love your sticker!” but i didn’t. instead, i photographed it, trying to look casual, like i wasn’t taking a picture of their vehicle, and thought about how i instantly liked them.
my sweet momma, the former owner of the now-broken salad bowl, was a firm believer in kindness. her favorite saying, “do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can,” was a john wesley quote. this is not the first time i have told of her kindness to others…all others.
as my mom prepared to move into assisted living she started giving away things she wouldn’t be bringing with her. she gave away her couch to a neighbor who needed one; she gave her dining table to another neighbor without a place around which to gather her family. she let things go, with love and caring moving them out the door to their new homes. she didn’t hesitate. it wasn’t about the stuff; it was simply about helping those in need of something she had. we just heard that many of the things in david’s parents’ house, that is being emptied now, have been given to neighbors and people who need particular items. a gesture of paying the generosity we are afforded forward, i immediately thought back to my mom’s own altruism in her time of transition.
these last months have been very challenging for us. i was devastated when, in this time of pandemic and after losing our other two positions, and at the start of my ninth year there, i lost my job. confusion and fear and dreadful sadness at losing my living, all the effort and love i had put into growing a music program, the loss of my dear community, all ran rampant in my heart. the stages of grief, including anger, lined up and for the last five months, i have tried to sort through all of what i have felt. the other day i drove past my former place of employment and just was overcome with how intensely weird it felt, how intensely weird the whole travail has been.
but in the middle of all of this weirdness, the lack of communication, the non-effort at mitigating whatever was seemingly accepted as an ousting-reason, there have been people. humans. kind humans. little by little people have reached out – in generosity and kindness. and, for that, the way has been a little less scary, a little less painful. the ties to the place, astoundingly, considering the place, are broken – irretrievably – shattered into a dark hole in a million shards. but the silken connections of people – from a full compass of our lives – extend in warm embrace. humankind. be-ing both.
i guess the next time i make salad or tabouli i’ll use the big stainless steel bowl – the one that also used to be my mom’s. it’s unbreakable. just like my tie to her.
we don’t go into any store without a mask on. the way we understand this – is that this is essential. in an effort to curb the spread of this pandemic, protect others and do our part to ‘flatten the curve’ we need to follow simple protocol.
at the risk of redundancy, which i have been accused of before, we have been appalled at the lack of people wearing masks. it’s not like you are being asked to undergo a colonoscopy before entering the grocery store (or worse yet, the prep for one); it is a simple request: wear a mask. yet, there we are, in the store and we can feel the now-familiar tightness-in-our-chest-anxiety rising as we attempt to move away from people who seem to care little about distancing or breathing their aerosols our way. what-on-earth-is-so-hard-about-this??
david went to a small grocery the other day. he had his mask and he had brought disinfecting wipes with him. neither of these were burdensome to him. he walked into a somewhat crowded store and found that he was the only one wearing a mask. what?!
wwmrd? (what would mr. rogers do?): be a good neighbor. (i’m betting he’d wear a mask.)
we live in wisconsin so it would seem prudent to look up what the department of health services has to say about this:
When should I wear a cloth face cover?
You should wear a cloth face cover when you are outside the home conducting essential activities such as going to work, to the grocery store, pharmacy, banking and enjoying outdoor activities while maintaining physical distancing.
that seems relatively clear. embracing redundancy once again: “you should wear a cloth face cover when you are outside the home conducting essential activities such as going to work, to the grocery store, pharmacy, banking and enjoying outdoor activities while maintaining physical distancing.”
down the street the state of illinois is requiring face masks. ahhh, you say with a cavalier smirk unhidden by a face mask. that state has a democratic governor, you point out as you enumerate the many ways that the government is taking over your personal life by issuing coronavirus guidelines. i’m not a biologist or an epidemiologist but i suspect that this pandemic is not stopping to discern the difference between democrats and republicans. and a face mask, worn by you or the people you encounter in a day, just might protect you, your family members, your friends, your colleagues, the people-who-you-don’t-know-at-the-grocery-store-but-who-count-anyway.
so why are the vast majority of people not wearing masks? why are so many folks not social distancing? why are people announcing vacations on facebook? vacations? are we even encouraged to do that right now? (because who wouldn’t love to go merrily on a vacation for a while?) one sweet person, who lives in another state, replying to a text of mine that bemoaned missing my children asked me if we were on “house arrest”. everything is confusing.
one of the funniest, albeit a tad off-color, clarifications of the what-would-mr-rogers-do approach i read said: “having some states locked down and some states not locked down is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.” no exponential brainpower needed there. i would think that swimming-pool-water-rule applies to most all the guidelines. seems pretty clear to me.
i guess i’m just saying i don’t understand. this is a global pandemic. despite a plethora of conspiracy theories distorting reality, there is medicine and there is science. i, for one, would rather place my trust in the people immersed in those than in self-aggrandizing politicians or propaganda-pushers, each ignoring medical science in their own creative ways. there is a difference. “america strong” reads the flag we pass on 7th avenue. strength and resilience are found in unity, not division, in working together, not apart, in being neighborly.
as the country begins to prematurely open up and disregard the CDC’s guidelines as “overly restrictive” we will likely download that multi-page guide. we would like to see more specifically how we can do our part . thinking they might actually protect us, we want to see the ‘overly restrictive’ restrictions. we want to participate in a responsible way. we will follow these guidelines as best we can. we will social distance. we will cough into our elbow. we will not gather. we will not pee in the pool.
and we will freaking wear masks, even if we are the only ones.
reverse threading 