Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First
Stories of Hope and Connection
I’ve been taking a writing class which, ironically, means I haven’t got much time to write (here). But I came across this cartoon thanks to a friend and it was so perfectly aligned with my prior post about Valentine’s Day and Loving Fiercely that I thought I’d pop on, say hello, and share it.
Next week we hit the year mark of this COVID quiet world. I’m working on a piece about that so stay tuned – and stay well!
Have hope. Find hope. Share hope. Be hope.
You will be alright.
For Valentine’s Day, the two Girl Scout troops at my daughter’s school made cards for the residents at my mom’s assisted living home. In addition, a friend’s daughters, who taught themselves how to make hot chocolate bombs over the past month, contributed 48 of their combustible confections as well as gift bags and cards for the staff. The bounty of goodness and love was breathtaking.
Valentine’s Day, typically, is one of my least favorite “holidays.” I don’t generally take kindly to prescribed displays of affection or gift-giving.
But, this year, my Hallmark-holiday hardened heart was cracked. This year, the idea of showing love vastly, abundantly, and against all odds felt genuine and truly necessary.
This past year, love was all we had much of the time, and it both carried us through and broke our hearts.
This time last year we were just hearing reports about some virus in China that was killing lots of people. Maybe it had already moved to Europe by now, I can’t really remember. I could look it up, but everyone already knows the story anyway. What I know for certain is that from my vantage point on the East Coast of the United States we could see something brewing on the horizon, but it still seemed pretty far off, at least to those of us who are not epidemiologists.
This time last year masks were not a thing and PPE was not a term bandied about by non-medical people. This time last year you would have been hard pressed to get a bulk order of PPE. Or at least that moment was coming soon.
This time last year I can hardly remember Valentine’s Day. Strike that, I can’t remember Valentine’s Day at all. Why would I? Remember, Hallmark-hardened heart and eye-rolling are my game. But I know that within a month we will cross the year mark of when the world here turned upside down.
The last day I visited my mom in person and hugged her with reckless abandon was March 9, 2020. I thought I wouldn’t be able to visit for a couple weeks and then it would be over. I could never have imagined all that has happened this past year coming to fruition. It all seemed so unlikely and hyperbolic. The energy felt like the hysteria before a big snowstorm when grocery stores sell out of eggs, milk, and bread as though we have never seen snow before and plan to survive the end of days on French toast.
In the end I wouldn’t visit my mom for months after March 9. In late March, COVID-19 swooped in. She and many staff and other residents were caught up in the storm. When visits were no longer allowed, staff facilitated facetime calls. When she was alone in the hospital battling COVID and it looked as though she might not make it, an angel nurse risked her own well-being to visit her and tell her explicitly that my brothers and I loved her and hadn’t abandoned her. When she eventually returned to her care home on hospice, with a pulmonary embolism and not eating or drinking, the staff not only continued to show up, but showed up with heart, compassion, and love. Not only did they nurse her back to health with Boost protein shakes and cookies for breakfast – whatever it took to get calories into her – but they sang with her, danced with her, honored her, and helped her reclaim her sparkle.
When the storm came, and every day of the year since, the caregivers at my mom’s care home dug deep, dug in, and showed up in myriad courageous and unexpected ways. I know this has happened in other assisted living homes and other places as well: parents who are juggling kids at home as well as work, and are struggling with both; teachers who show up to teach, despite being scared; doctors and nurses who work shift after grueling shift in the ER and on the COVID floors; orderlies who clean what we can’t even imagine; grocery store employees; delivery drivers; pharmacists. So many people have shown up, again and again and again, because they knew that people were counting on them, depending on them, and that we would more be vulnerable without them. I look at the faces of my mom and her neighbors and I say thank GOD for those who take care of the vulnerable among us. Thank God they step up every day, but especially every day of this past year of horrors and extraordinary challenge.
Fierce love. That’s what this year has been. A year of loving fiercely and courageously and doing the best we can.
This year, love needed to be celebrated in a BIG way. This year, love has been the focal point of our very survival. This year, love not only wins, it is a triumph.
Awesome Hats by Kitr Knits
Daily motivational quote by Sailors Sweet Life
Oodles of Valentine’s cards by the Girl Scouts!
Combustible Confections by the Gauldie Girls!
Photos by the Falls!
Smiles and good vibes by me!
For years after having kids and while taking care of my mom, I had to modify what I thought my life was supposed to be to accommodate what it actually was. I spent far too long trying to shove the round peg that is me into the square hole that was my expectations of myself. Life intervened. Lessons were learned (painfully).
Eventually I let go of some things and I adapted. I left the working world and focused more on my family and my health. It was disorienting and I was consumed by guilt and grief because I wasn’t living the identity I had constructed for myself of being a “working mom.” A paycheck validated my worth and provided confirmation that I was contributing substantively to the world, as sad as that is to acknowledge. Without it, and without a title, I felt diminished and like my tether to and meaning in the broader world had shrunk. My life was fully in the service of others, consumed with sports schedules and camp sign ups, meal planning and doctors appointments. I craved purpose and passion. I got dirty diapers and dishes.
All moms are working moms.
a dear friend pulling me out of the abyss
I couldn’t accept for a while that this was a point in time, a temporary passage and where I needed to be for then, but not forever. I felt like I couldn’t hack it (and of course I assumed as I looked around that everyone else could and was doing “it” better than I was). What was “it,” you might ask? I am not even sure. Life? Work? Or, better, that most elusive work/life balance? My go-to mentality when I am up against a wall is that I must not be trying hard enough. But I couldn’t get out of my own way, and as most people eventually realize walls are pretty solid things. I remember reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron and wanting to chuck it against the wall after the 13th page because what she prescribed was to sit with my discontent, essentially, and what I wanted was a to-do list to fix it.
When the pace of life and the noise in your head gets to be too much, where do you find sanctuary? For me, there’s nothing like the smell of warm pine needles on a forest floor, the lapping of lake water against an evergreen shoreline, a boulder-strewn mountain rising in the distance, the stillness of sitting quietly by a pond. No cellphones, no crowds, no distractions. With headspace I can reorient and find my center again.
But for the longest time when my kids were young, I couldn’t travel. The place I dreamed of, Mount Katahdin in Northern Maine, was simply too far away and my life was too busy and too consumed by caring for others for me to disappear into the wilderness. Eventually I would institute an annual pilgrimage to Katahdin, but what about all the time in between? I learned to seek elements of Maine closer to home, and to find stability and happiness within. This is what Pema Chodron teaches, but it took me a while to accept it. It’s still a work in progress. I still get wound up like a top and overwhelmed by life. I still am my own harshest critic. But I find my center by carving out time for exercise; laughing with good friends (always reliable for grounding); being curious and just saying yes! to something new sometimes; taking a walk in my suburban wilderness (often now with my dog); and delighting in the little things like a crisp blue sky, flowers, or a box of cookies arriving in the mail. These are highly recommended life hacks for moms and for everyone else who might feel like life is directing them versus the other way around.
Yesterday I was reminded, spectacularly, about the power of finding sanctuary, be that a mountain vista or a more traditional place of worship. At the end of a tour of historic properties in a small, central Massachusetts mill town, our tour guide invited us to see the interior of one of the local churches. As you might guess, I am more of a nature-than-built-environment-as-sanctuary kind of person, but I am also curious. We walked through a dark entry foyer, nothing of note. But as the door to the sanctuary opened, it was a like a curtain that had veiled and protected my heart through this long, challenging year of isolation, lowering expectations, and gracefully accepting our lot was swept aside. This sanctuary of towering ceilings, stained glass windows, and ornate carvings forced a long, deep inhale. This church, modest in presentation from the outside and unexpectedly, stunningly beautiful on the inside, restored part of me that I didn’t even know was missing. It jolted awake a part of my brain that I hadn’t quite even realized was dormant. It reminded me of all the beauty there is in the world, and that you often don’t have to go very far to find it. There are unexpected treasures everywhere, if we are willing to stretch ourselves, be open-minded, and pull open the door to see it.
Virtue, tolerance, compassion, and kindness are, unequivocally, alive and well. It may not seem that way at times, but “the better angels of our nature” are on display much more often than not, especially in small moments and daily (even limited by COVID) interactions. There is plenty of headline-grabbing nonsense and legitimate worry about an abundant proclivity to act on our most basic instincts. There’s certainly much to unpack about human psychology and group think, demagoguery, isolation, and desperation. But there are also acts of unparalleled humanity, courage, love, and, fundamentally, connection, to celebrate.
“Emotional literacy is the foundation of resilience, empathy…connection. We are hard-wired for connection and, in the absence of it, there seems to always be suffering.”
Brene Brown
To keep with the dog theme, I’ll start with an example from the night Tucker was injured. As I scrambled to get him to the ER, I sent a quick text to two of his puppy friends (okay, their owners) to let them know what had happened since we had tentative plans to meet for a walk. The response wasn’t just “Oh my gosh, how awful” or even “how can I help,” but instead “I will add extra to the meal I am making for my family and deliver it to yours so you don’t have to worry about dinner” and “I will come sit with you at the vet so you aren’t alone.”
I ended up waiting at the ER for about four hours – there are LOTS of dogs these days and a correlating increase in incidents from dog parks gone wild (plus, I mean, COVID is the answer for any slowdown or SNAFU, isn’t it?). During that time, my family was treated to a homemade meal (not of my making – the best kind!) and I had a friend to help me process what the vet was saying and to remind me to eat something myself. When thanked for their help, both said “of course, that’s just what people do.” And I think that’s exactly right, actually. Generally, that is what people do. And it’s awesome.
Then there was December, a blur of a month at the best of times, which these most assuredly are not. This December was a season of too much loss and too many tears. Through it all I kept coming back to the simultaneous outpouring of compassion and love. Both/and.
During one week in December three friends lost loved ones (only one from COVID, a reminder that people are still suffering life-altering losses and then there is also COVID). COVID-19 – whether the cause of death or not – has turned all norms of grieving upside down with distance and masks and the migraine-inducing nightmare of holding back hugs when that is all anyone wants – and needs.
That awkward restraint notwithstanding, my breath caught at the lump in my throat seeing how people showed up, again and again and in so many ways, for those grieving. In one case, my friend organized a short ceremony outside at a cemetery. It was a frigid mid-winter weekday afternoon in the middle of a pandemic. But when I turned onto the cemetery drive I saw a long line of cars that I recognized, all loaded with friends and neighbors, individuals and full families, who came to pay their respects and show their support. When the bereaved family arrived, people slowly emerged from their vehicles and walked quietly up the frozen, grassy hill to gather around the casket. We represented multiple faiths, many cultures and different backgrounds – and we stood on that blustery hillside, spread at a distance, but together as a community, to honor the passing of our neighbor and friend, to support his family, and to show love despite and because of everything. The officiant noted that as human beings we have our differences and we don’t always agree, but we can all agree that death is inevitable, and we all walk this earth not knowing when the end will be just that it will come. There is unity in this fundamental humanity.
If you choose to peek around the formidable walls constructed by sadness, distance, difficulty, difference, and loss, you will discover some of the purest forms of community, commonality, compassion, and connection. These are where unity and humanity reside. It is from here that we rise up and hold each other up and together. Be curious and kind. Seek the good that emerges from difficulty. Our humanity is in tact. Love wins.
When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.
The new dawn balloons as we free it.
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
amanda gorman – the hill we climb
To understand more about what makes us tick emotionally, here is a great podcast: Clear and Vivid with Alan Alda and Brene Brown (on emotional literacy , empathy, courage, and where they come from).
“Empathy is with someone, sympathy is for someone from over here.”
-Alan Alda and Brene Brown podcast conversation
Tucker here. I am the small Schnoodle that is the subject of much recent kerfuffle. Today I am your guest blogger, here to tell you about this dog’s life from my perspective.
Simply put, every day is JOY! That’s who I am and the spirit I live by. I look like a living teddy bear, for starters, but it’s also what I am all about – snow! food! friends! walks! my hoomans! My hooman thinks sooooo much – maybe too much? Me? I can distill life down to the essentials with me as the only fluff.
Here’s an overview of my day:
I wake each morning refreshed and ready to greet the day. I wiggle and wag at the Return of the Hoomans.
Before I do anything else, I enjoy a nice, long, delicious stretch. Downward dog….upward dog…maybe one more down dog before I sit for pets. That’s kind of the routine.
After that, I race down the stairs to the back door because it is OUTSIDE TIME. My hooman puts on my leash and I shake and shimmy and whine while they put on their shoes because it’s all so exciting anticipating the Opening of the Door!
As we walk around the block I literally smell the roses (and the leaf pile and the prior dog’s pee – the details are irrelevant. I sniff it all and enjoy myself tremendously).
When we are walking my main hooman is always saying, “Let’s go!” and “Come on, Tucker.” I wonder where we are racing off to and what’s the rush? Everything seems perfect to me – my hooman, fresh air, good smells. I’d never actually say, “Slow your roll, hooman” – that would be rude – but I attempt to train them better by locking my legs and focusing super hard on my sniffs so they have to chillax and take it down a notch.
Tucker the Schnoodle
When we get home, we EAT! Sometimes I need a nap first, sometimes I eat right away. I like to mix it up.
Sometime in the morning we usually go for a nice, long walk with my friends. We jump all over each other in greeting every time because yesterday – or even an hour – can feel like a very looooong time ago. And also because we live so much in the moment that every new moment is the BEST. Besides it is just so exciting to Meet the Friends. I don’t understand why hoomans refrain from showing such enthusiasm for their friends and curtail their jumping. Friends are important.
When I see my friends down the street I race as fast as possible, Chariots of Fire theme song a-blazing in my head, unbridled joy and love propelling me forward. My hooman gets her exercise, too, because she is always tethered to the other end of my leash. Joy and exercise for all!
tucker the schnoodle
Mind you, I would gladly run free, but I have been known to get a little carried away and forget to come back when called. Guys, there are SO MANY smells out there and the world is so much fun to explore that I just can’t stop! So leash walking it is. My hoomans say they’ve learned their lesson, whatever that means. I figure time will tell.
Usually during the Big Walk I find one special stick to bring home. It’s a big job, and I am a proud prancing poodle the whole way back.
After the Big Walk, I sleep. Beauty rest is important and also a lot of fun. My main hooman says things like “you look like the kind of dog that gets beat up” and “you better watch your back – you would be a delectable snack” but she’s from Philadelphia so, meh, what do you expect? Folks from the City of “Brotherly Love” have a weird sense of humor.
Speaking of getting beat up, the day I was attacked was such a surprise. I just wanted to be friends. With those dogs. With other dogs. With everyone. I did a good job loving the vets when my hooman took me to the ER. They gave me big hugs. Now I make sure that everyone knows I am out here waiting to be loved by barking my biggest, bestest barks and alerting the neighborhood to my joyful presence. I won’t make that mistake twice. Smart, right?
What else? OH! How could I forget Backyard Time and Riding in the Car?!? Anytime someone opens the door to the backyard, I race out to investigate any potentially nefarious activity in my domain by checking the perimeters and practicing my barking. I also love romping off leash, especially with my hoomans and my friends. Riding in the Car can be a little scary getting IN that big, loud, strange-smelling thing, but once settled I stick my schnoodle schnoz out the window – oh! the sensory stimulation – and thrill at the adventure.
Have I mentioned that I have these hoomans wrapped around my little paws? Yea, it’s mutual. I dig them too. Loyalty, unconditional love, and pure joy are my main game.
I could say more, but there is a squirrel on the fence, so I must go. If my schedule allows, I’ll come back another time. But, basically, it boils down to this: live in the moment, find and jump for joy daily, don’t hold on to hard feelings, friends are important, get your exercise, play, eat, and sleep. That about covers it. Oh, and take a deep breath and drink some water. It can’t hurt.
Pro tip: water tastes way better in a random plastic dish outside or from the pond than that boring stuff the hoomans procure from the sink and put in my bowl in the kitchen. Or maybe that’s just me?
My dog is okay now. He is back to bouncing around the backyard like a pinball and leaping and jumping for joy. We went to the vet 5 or 6 times during his convalescence for various issues that arose. He received stiches, two courses of antibiotics, two pain medications maxxed to the highest doses allowable, and laid low wearing the cone of shame for two weeks. It was ruff. But he has healed. Physically. Mentally, the jury is still out.
After the attack, I knew he would have some trauma and anxiety to work through. What I didn’t expect is that I may be in worse shape! And I have been noticing that I am prone to avoiding dealing with it. As in, in general, avoiding things that make me uncomfortable. In this case, I attempt to avoid other dogs like the plague. My dog? He just barks his head off. Meanwhile, I am cringing and telling him in the not-so-gentlest of tones to stop it. Stop it. STOP IT. Why must he call more attention to us?
I started working with a dog trainer to help get us through this period. I called her in to help me get his barking under control. We have spent a lot of time working on “heel,” helping him to understand that his job is to stay focused on my leg and to follow me wherever I might lead. He doesn’t need to worry about the dog up the path or the squirrel in the bushes. Just focus on my leg and let me lead.
For my part, I need to be a competent leader. As we walk, the trainer honestly spends more time working on me than my dog. She tells me, “Relax. Loosen your grip on the leash. Stand up tall. Breathe.” And she keeps saying it. Over and over again. I can’t be cowering in the corner and high tailing it in the opposite direction every time I see another dog and expecting my dog to “just relax.” I recognize now that it doesn’t exactly set the right tone when I see a dog up the trail and say, “Oh, God. Here comes another dog.” At first I didn’t even consciously hear myself saying it. But even if that message wasn’t said outloud – which it has been – it was definitely the energy I was presenting with. Everything out there for a while felt like a threat. And whatever I feel translates right down the leash to my poor pup, who is looking for reassurance from me.
These days, we actively seek out other dogs on our walks so we can practice. I would have preferred to stay in the backyard or choose a quiet, untrod path. My favorite walks, by far, remain those when we run into no one. The dog trainer tells me I need to breathe and relax and face it.
I’ve heard these messages before. I’ve practiced a lot with facing my fears. I see a therapist every few weeks, I’ve taken meditation classes, listened to podcasts. And I keep forgetting. Or, more, I am who I am and I go back to my basic instincts. And, then, THEN, all the work kicks in and I notice the feelings and the narrative. And that means I can pull it back. Then I remember that I have to face into the fire to extinguish it, not run the other way. Pema Chodron explains it so well in her talk “Getting Unstuck: Fear and Fearlessness.” Writing this post was a great reminder to watch it again. “It’s a process of being here all along, not just when we like how it’s going. Instead of that making you more self-absorbed, it makes you very decent, very sane, and very open to the world and other people.”
Every time I hear myself say “heel” to my dog, in my mind I think “heal.”
Life keeps on giving us opportunity to practice. Keep facing into it and keep going.
We walked home, my cellphone clamped between my cheek and my shoulder, my dog upside down like a baby in my arms, unable to walk from the bite wound. Cars whooshed past during the more modest but no less loud flow of quarantine rush hour as I waited for the vet to pick up while admonishing myself not to panic. “It helps no one if you lose it. Do not cry.”
When the vet answered, I explained what had happened. “You need to go directly to an emergency vet if he needs stiches. Did the other dogs have their rabies vaccinations?”
“Uh, I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask.”
“You need to find out. You both need rabies shots if you have open wounds.”
The enormity of the situation pawed its way through the fog and settled in. With moderate success, I instructed myself to take a deep breath to try to quell the out-of-control-coupled-with-a-strong-desire-to-crawl-into-a-hole sensation that was rising in my chest.
When I got home, I tiptoed up the stairs to find my husband, hoping to avoid drawing any attention from our kids before we had a plan. In whispers I described the surprise attack, showed him our wounds. “I think I need to take him to the ER?”
I said this as a question, almost imploring him to disagree with me. As someone who works with anxiety all the time I was open to the possibility that I could be overreacting, that maybe a gaping hole on the underside of our dog’s belly was not in fact something to worry about. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “the only easy day was yesterday” is the type of Navy ethos I was raised with. Which is a wild mindset to run smack into an anxious being, where the gray area between a real crisis and an anxiety-provoked one can be difficult to decipher. I know from experience that my gut instinct is actually pretty accurate, but I always do this little dance of second-guessing myself wondering if I should tough it out just a little longer.
It was late afternoon by this point. Having pulled multiple all nighters in the pediatric ER with a sick kid, I’ve learned to just go before it gets dark and all remaining rational thought goes out the window as fatigue sweeps in. The sooner you go, the sooner you get to go to bed.
Sure enough, once our dog was in the vet’s arms, I felt my shoulders drop from their alert perch near my ears as relief washed over me. That’s when the uncontrollable shaking started. Through chattering teeth I confessed to a friend over the phone that I couldn’t stop shaking. “That’s just the adrenaline leaving your body. It’s normal.”
Oh.
I had always thought when I got the shivers and shakes that it was a weakness, that I wasn’t tough enough, that there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t just keep it together. I should know by now that what I perceive to be my unique oddities are very rarely only mine. A nearly decade-old memory of a dimly-lit, brick-walled classroom at the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine surfaced. All of us patients were sitting in a circle with our eyes closed as the teacher led a guided meditation. I was rolling my eyes behind my shut eyelids, bracing myself against the “woo-woo” territory we were entering.
“You are walking down a path through a forest. There is a tree in the distance. Walk over to it. The tree is you.”
Silence (apart from my internal groaning).
“Ask the tree for guidance on a character trait you need help fixing.”
I could barely contain my snark. BUT, I had chosen to take this class to explore every avenue I could to alleviate my RA symptoms. AND I was in this room with all these other people so I felt committed to do what was asked (or at least to not be rude). I kept my eyes closed, looked at the oak tree standing tall and sideways (oddly), and asked it the question as instructed. Out of nowhere – I swear – a voice said “self-doubt.” Woah. That is spot on, but I had never really thought of it.
The room remained silent, everyone was still, but the rush of blood in my ears picked up in intensity along with the pace of my breathing. The teacher instructed, “Now ask the tree how best you can heal.” Again, this voice, intoned, “Love yourself more.”
The root cause of every damn thing that gets in my way is doubting myself. What a novel idea to treat myself with the same latitude and compassion that I give others, to stop assuming that I am in some way to blame when something – anything – goes wrong.
As I sat there at the vet I realized two things: one, clearly I still have work to do. But, two, I noticed in real time the negative messaging and suffering I levy upon myself. I noticed the flood of could have, should have, if only you had narratives that began to consume me as the adrenaline ebbed away, as if I could have controlled what happened, as if any of us can control anything more than our response to what happens to us. And those were awesome catches – historic, life-changing catches. I may be my own harshest critic. And I may be pre-programmed toward self-judgment, writing nasty headlines and elaborate stories in my head about my imperfections and inadequacies. But if I can insert awareness to those moments then, well, then we are getting somewhere. I know I am not the only person who faces these challenges. This was a major oxygen mask moment. Breathe.
To be continued….
The truth is, I’ve been trying to write for weeks. I have literally 10 drafts going, some with a couple notes jotted, some full-fledged-almost-there-posts. I had high hopes and great intentions of writing some reflections on 2020 well before the new year, but here we are.
I have been stuck. I guess it’s a form of writer’s block, though I have plenty ideas. It’s been a rough patch, for sure. Maybe this is normal for a writer. It certainly is for life, right!?!
This holiday season brought along with it some big, sometimes crippling, feelings. The holidays will do that in a good year, like last year when the day before Thanksgiving I opened a cardboard box my brother had delivered from our mom’s apartment. Within the thick layers of tacky tape and the fortress of dusty bubble wrap I discovered our mom’s China plates and was promptly steamrollered by memories and emotion. I set the Thanksgiving table with them, a heaping of nostalgia to go with my mashed potatoes.
This year, there was all of that type of longing and loss coupled with the fatigue brought on by merely existing in this quarantine/social distance world. Somewhere along the way this year something broke inside me, like I left too many documents open on my desktop and it caused a short circuit. But it happened more slowly than a computer crashing, more like the chiseling away of stone into a statue. The result, in this case, isn’t beautiful, though, so maybe it’s more like when weather eroded the Old Man of the Mountain for so long that the face finally fell off one day. Yep, that’s about right. Every morning I peel my eyes open, claw my way out of fitful sleep, and flop myself off the side of the bed to standing. It is no joyful greeting to the day, I can assure you. Slowly, I coax myself out of my pajamas into “real clothes,” a ridiculously laborious effort executed primarily to prevent myself from getting salt and snow all over my favorite pajamas while walking the dog.
That is generally the state of things here. I army crawled my way through the molasses swamp of holiday decorating and gift-buying. I banged out an apple pie for Thanksgiving the day after the actual meal was supposed to occur. I ordered my holiday cards in October because I had no clue what month it was and they were 75% off – and, honestly, I could have written them in April and said approximately the same thing.
When 2020 rolled around, I didn’t have any big expectations or thoughts for what it might hold. I never do resolutions or goals for New Year’s Eve. It feels so arbitrary. If you need to push the reset button, New Years is as good a time as any to do so. But resets are possible all year long. Never let the date on your calendar stop you from shifting your mindset, reframing and seeing the world in new ways, being flexible, pivoting, and starting fresh. I did like the look of 2020, though. It was so nice and symmetrical. Much less clunky than 2019. Not that, as we all clearly now know if we ever wondered before, the beauty of the date has anything at all to do with anything.
And somehow we find ourselves at January 1, 2021. 1/1/21. Now that it’s taken me so long to finish this post, even better we arrive at 1/2/21. Every year has its challenges, but no one could have predicted the global scale of 2020’s plight. It’s been a difficult year and there have been some truly wonderous moments, many that I would have missed if I was not forced to live slow and small. Among other things, I learned that I cannot focus or develop any substantive thoughts while staring at a computer screen of rotating faces staring back at me, and also that Zoom is a miraculous way to get back in touch with friends and family scattered across the country and the world. I learned that I would love to have a personal chef if I could afford one, and also that I will do whatever it takes to feed my family tasty, healthy meals because I love them (and even to recreate favorites like Auntie Anne’s pretzels, dumplings, pizza, and sesame chicken when takeout was not an option). I learned that I love exploring and learning about the world and that claustrophobia sets in when my wings are clipped and also that there is amazing stuff happening in my own backyard like Great Horned Owls hooting and the timeless joy of good old-fashioned sparklers and small, quiet holiday gatherings serving up an introvert’s dream. It’s been a year of being depressed and broken brained and inspired and awe-struck.
You know when you stop eating sugar and all of a sudden all the other food you eat tastes so much better, like your taste buds have been reactivated? This year was kind of like that, but instead of quitting sugar (which I most assuredly did NOT!) I quit rushing around and commitments and shoulds and going places. Once I adjusted to the sensory deprivation, the little moments closer to home suddenly became sweeter. Do I crave traveling and other people and Olaf-esque warm hugs? Hell, yes! Do I wish that this period was over and that it hadn’t dragged on for so long in the first place with the completely unnecessary and on-going loss of life and health? Of course.
But this year I learned that I can do hard things for as long as necessary to benefit the greater good. I might not like it, but I can do it. I always hoped that would be the case, but this year was the proving ground. And just like when I have quit sugar in the past, and became more aware of what parts of eating sugar do me no favors and what parts of quitting sugar completely suck the very joy out of life, I will take from this fraught period the same kind of awareness about life. There are lessons from this period that I will abide forever. That’s the hope, anyway.
It’s great to have hope at the dawn of a new year. It’s necessary to source it from within whenever one is challenged. Onward.
Here we are, folks, on the precipice of a Thanksgiving that will by all counts be unique, whether it’s the volume of zoom calls you will be fielding or your attempt to stay warm (and dry in New England) while eating outside – or if it’s simply quieter than usual. Be sure that gratitude is on the menu, despite everything.
I have been trying damn hard not to jump on the “2020 sucks,” “because 2020…,” “totally forgettable,” “worst year ever” bandwagon. It’s telling that I have to make a conscious effort, my face all contorted in a Jim Carrey-esque exaggerated grimace as I wrestle internally with how I feel some days. Some days are just too much. But it’s also not either/or. Surely even during the shit show that has been the last eight months (or more) some good things have also happened. It’s both a shit show AND some good things happened.
Holidays are particularly fraught with either/or thinking. Either it is the tradition I am used to or it sucks and we should write it off. I admit, over the last couple of days I have found myself traipsing down memory lane and getting caught up in the nostalgia of Thanksgiving’s past. Thanksgiving is my family’s most cherished holiday by far. Usually the whole family descends from all across the country for multiple days. That’s not happening this year.
I find myself stopping in the middle of memory lane, a little knot building in my chest, to reckon with what Thanksgiving is not this year. There will not be the anticipation of everyone arriving late Wednesday or early Thursday, the hugs and handshakes and “it’s so good to see you’s.” There will be no road race Thanksgiving morning, no family soccer game, no toothy grins for the camera trying to capture 20 or more people smooshed around the table, no charades after dinner. This year my mom’s care home is locked down on coronavirus red alert, and a recently-returned-from-college relative is Covid positive and in quarantine.
If I got stuck there, I would be plunging down the drain of self-pity with Drano clearing the way. But here’s the truth about Thanksgiving this year: while I am bummed about missing the totally predictable flow of both conversation and events, including the guaranteed antics and laughter that happen whenever my family gets together, I am also friggin’ excited that I am not cooking; I am not cleaning; I am not hosting 20 of my nearest and dearest; I am not traveling. There is no planning required whatsoever and it is downright freaking liberating. It’s like a real, actual break. A holiday, if you will.
Most Thanksgivings I roll up to the Monday morning after just trashed and exhausted, my house disheveled, the laundry piled to the ceiling, and jumping right back into the fray for the frantic sprint to Christmas as if I never actually needed a day off anyway. This year, we didn’t have the annual tradition of guilting-of-my-brother-to-come-East-for-Thanksgiving-even-though-he-has-said-a-million-times-it’s-not-a-convenient-time-of-year-from-him-to-travel. There are no hotel reservations or airport pickups or travel agency level requirements of any sort to coordinate while juggling the rest of life. Did I mention I am not spending all day cooking a meal that people devour in 20 minutes? That does not bring me joy. This also means I don’t have to get groceries. Or clean a million dishes. Cry if you will about this twist of fate, but there are reasons to be happy. Both/and. Not either/or.
Needless to say, the both/and mindset can be incredibly helpful for getting yourself unstuck and it is so much more real than either/or. You can celebrate gratitude for what you have AND recognize that others have much less. You can feel joy AND acknowledge that it’s been an extraordinarily difficult year. You can be and feel and do both AND… We aren’t one-dimensional automatons who feel one way and one way only the way either/or requires. That’s a trap and it’s so stifling. Abundance is a mindset, and it’s not a mindset that flourishes in a world of either/or.
So my Thanksgiving message to you is: take the time to check the narrative in your head. Investigate the tendency toward either/or thinking. Tamp down the noise of the big feelings (the negative ones are super LOUD) and dig a little deeper. Ask yourself if there is room for feeling both frustrated, angry, afraid, sad, lonely AND grateful. There’s no use waiting for the world to steady itself again. You may be waiting a while – and, frankly, it needs to change anyway in many respects. It’s critical to learn to hold and acknowledge all of the feelings, the whole messy, contradictory jumble, together. It changes everything about one’s outlook.
Here’s another truth bomb for you to ponder over your pie – we don’t need to celebrate Thanksgiving when we are told to by a date on the calendar. I know, WHAT?!?! These calendar dates are just human constructs created to keep ourselves propelling forward through life in some sort of organized fashion. I know that they correspond with when kids get off school and that’s significant grown-up reality, of course. I recognize that I can’t just decide to have Thanksgiving on some random Wednesday in February and expect my whole family to show up (though, to be fair, I bet the airfare would be a lot cheaper and no lines at the grocery store! My brother would come from Colorado for sure, no guilting required). I often think about holidays as being a little bit of mind control of the masses. Does anyone ever think about WHY we do this at this particular time or if it even works for you?
So, try this one on for size – we can celebrate thanksgiving when there’s a vaccine and we can properly hug each other and not worry about who may or may not get sick afterwards. It’s dinner, folks, pure and simple. We can -and should – give thanks more than once per year anyway. Thanksgiving 2020 is looking like it might be absolutely delightful in July 2021. Thanksgiving 2021 we can get our gratitude on together in a big way. But, also, I have gratitude right here, right now, in this wonky Thanksgiving 2020 that’s coming right up. Because it’s all in how you see it. It’s a loss and it’s also a win. Both/and. The biggest win of all, of course, is ensuring that everyone in my family is healthy and well and, ideally, alive this time next year. So far so good – and for that, I am extremely grateful.
Happy Thanksgiving! Make of it what you will – don’t forget the gratitude morsels, and don’t forget the masks!
You will be alright.
Wear a mask.
She would laugh that we were so worried. I can hear her voice in my mind saying, if she understood, “What? About moi? Ridiculous.” She would probably be upset that we even sent her to the hospital in the first place. She is more of a stick-it-out-on-your-own, “I’m not sick, I just don’t feel well,” kind of person.
March 28 to June 5, 2020. That was the duration of my mom’s journey with COVID-19. She went to the hospital with gastrointestinal symptoms. We expected her to get fluids, be monitored for a little while in the emergency room, and then be sent home. Instead they tested her for the then recently arrived COVID-19, which I shrugged off as ER hypervigilance (leave no test un-run!). If only I could be there, I thought, I could explain to them what she can’t, that she always has a little cough and the sniffles. It’s nothing to worry about.
Her positive test result stunned us and resulted in her prompt admission to the hospital, where she tumbled into the black hole of a blossoming public health crisis and a rapidly filling hospital. She used to tell me not to set my expectations too high because then you just invite disappointment. When I heard “COVID positive,” my expectations were grounded pretty firmly in reality.
She endured 2 separate hospitalizations (I wrote about the first one in a HuffPost essay – ironically, it was published the day she was sent back with secondary complications). She ended up spending 3 weeks total in the hospital. She didn’t eat or walk for weeks; had pneumonia (mild, mercifully) and then a pulmonary embolism and thrush. She was poked and prodded every which way and was generally miserable and confused. We eventually made the decision to discharge her from the hospital on hospice with the goal of getting her to a situation where she was comfortable and surrounded by people who loved her (even if I couldn’t be one of them because, COVID, which is pretty much the answer to any question of this dystopian existence anymore). We hoped that with one-on-one attention in a familiar setting someone could get her to eat. And we were prepared, if not, for her to leave this world in peace and comfort.
It was a long, long road full of Boost protein shakes and brownies for breakfast (for her, and, some days, to be honest, for me, too, because, well, I had to find comfort where I could). It was days of phone calls with doctors and nurses and hospice workers and chaplains and family and funeral homes. It was a nurse praying with her as she lay quietly in her bed, telling her we loved her even though we couldn’t be there. It was short Facetimes with my mom and the aides working with her, the Sound of Music or My Fair Lady playing on her CD player in the background. It was texted images of her sitting in a wheelchair getting her nails done or painting during a group activity. It was videos of her shuffle-dancing around the dining room, supported by an aide, honoring the woman she was and infusing joy where they could into her life. It was reports about her learning how to walk again, first with people supporting her on both sides, then, slowly, a few steps on her own. It took about 6 weeks for the odds of her making it through this illness to shift in her favor. She doesn’t remember any of it, which may have been her saving grace. Because she has Alzheimer’s, she lives in this exact moment, and then this one, and then the next, with no reference to the past or the future.
Through, and despite, it all, she exuded her characteristic grit and indefatigable spirit. She gave my brothers and I fatigued smiles through the Facetime screen, her inner spark sometimes igniting in her eyes through the otherwise wan expression on her face. More recently we have received videos of her humming a tune and dancing down the hall to the beat of her literal own drummer. Her laughter echoes like the first birds of spring after a long winter, issuing robustly and sweetly through the air, quickening the rhythm of my heart and flooding my soul with warmth. I only just realized as I listened more intentionally to her laugh, absorbing more fully this sound that so recently I thought I would never hear again, that her laugh echoes the sound of my own.
I guess it wasn’t her time. I guess she still has more to do here on this Earth, more to teach. I don’t know what else to say about how close we walked to the line, and then how she suddenly walked it back. She would say, “What did you expect? Of course I lived. Maybe don’t take life so seriously. Maybe don’t count me out just because the prognosis looks bad (really bad). Now tell me about you. How are you?”
I find myself speechless at times in her presence, my mind bending as I try to reconcile what happened to her and to our family during those months and the vast loss of life during this COVID outbreak, with her physically sitting there still with me, smiling, laughing, and full of LIFE. We sit outside on the patio at her care home admiring the trees and sky, listening to the river, singing or just sitting quietly. She still appreciates beauty in the world: a clear blue sky, a gentle warm breeze. She will close her eyes and tilt her chin upward, breath deeply, and smile broadly, completely at peace, 100% her authentic, younger self, the mom I remember. Post-COVID, she is back to walking unassisted, dance parties, eating, singing, giving back rubs, smiling, and laughing – lots of laughing. She doesn’t have much to say, and doesn’t understand much of what I tell her, but she knows I am someone special to her. She lights up like it’s a surprise party every time an aide walks her outside and she sees me standing there. On some biological level we are still connected, even if she can’t remember my name. She would like to give me a hug, reaches for me, but we sit and tap our toes together instead, a small physical connection that doesn’t potentially jeopardize either of us. COVID kisses. It’s the best we can do for now.
I recognize that I am one of the lucky ones. My mom returned to me from the brink, and she returned bubbling with happiness and love to share. She still has so much to teach, not only to me, but to all of us: about enjoying the simple things in life, like a warm breeze and a blue sky; about what it means to be fueled by love, to be guided by an inner joie de vivre; about dancing and laughing through life, no matter what; about resilience and grit and never, ever counting someone out or giving up, no matter the odds; about how deeply the love between a mother and her child runs, and how it’s still recognizable when all else is lost.
When it comes time to say goodbye, whenever that may be, I hope I will be able to be there and to hold her hand. In the meantime, I am counting my blessings and following her lead: taking a deep breath; embracing unbridled joy; seeking daily, small moments of happiness; loving my family and friends hard; smiling and laughing often; feeling grateful for every day I still have mom on this Earth; and living as close as I can to this very moment, and then the next one and then the next, moment to moment to moment. Even now. Especially now.
My mom survived COVID-19 and has lived gracefully with Alzheimer’s for over 7 years. She still exudes love and compassion for others. She still smiles and laughs. She is still the life of the party. She continues to be an example to us all about a life well-lived, no matter what. She would say, “This too shall pass.” And it will.
Mask up. We got this.
#Youwillbealright
#Wearethesolution
#Wearamask
Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First 