It seems as though there are fewer and fewer places to hide from the spectre of Coronavirus. Even those of us who set out on a conversation trying to discuss something, anything other than the impending wave, there is no escaping the momentum of what surrounds us.
And so, in the midst of swimming, paddling, gasping for breath, I surface for a gulp of air to bring you something, anything other than the impending wave. Because I am sure I will write about it. Just…not today.
Today, amid all the craziness, this guy on my desk caught my eye.
This…is Ruffus. He’s my buddy. We’ve been together pretty much since my first year of teaching in Loudoun County, Virginia, and he’s followed me across three states, four districts, eight schools, at least fifteen classrooms and twenty-five years of teaching.
We’ve been through all kinds of things together. He’s been my demo dog for math lessons, a companion animal to many students, and he’s been the “talking stick” for countless class meetings and heart-to-heart conversations.
He may be just a tiny six inches long. His fur may be fading, and the paint on his eyes may be chipping away bit by bit, and his belly might be held together with some very amateur stitches in absolutely the wrong color.
But he’s seen so much, and heard so much, and done so much.
I think I’ll keep him around a little while longer.
I can picture myself tuning in. I picture my own brother looking on from wherever he is, perhaps laughing along in that laugh I can never unhear, visiting me later on in my dreams to thank me for keeping him around a little longer in my thoughts.
It should be the kind of show I’m into. As a fellow human who lost a brother too soon, as someone who knows that grieving is messy and weird and difficult, I should find comfort and solace in sharing someone else’s experience. I should find a quiet hour and a box of tissues and dig in.
Should.
But as a human who knows that grieving is messy and weird and difficult, I don’t know that I have it in me.
And I’ve hung out long enough with Grief to know that Should has absolutely no business being anywhere in the room.
So it’s possible that I might watch the special, and it’s possible that it might offer solace and validation. It’s also possible I’ll pop in a DVD of Airplane, and think fondly on the guy who would text me random lines from that movie, who had crazy amazing dimples, who reduced everybody’s first names to single syllables, and who left this world way too soon.
Of course I’m serious about that. And don’t call me Shirley.
Yes, my son’s college has made the decision to move to online learning starting after Spring Break.
And that boy, the one I’ve been missing, the one I enjoy spending time with, the one it was harder to say goodbye to after Winter Break than at move-in, the one I’ve started to enjoy more texts and phone calls and conversations with, the one I was looking forward to visiting over my own Spring Break, and again on Mom’s Weekend, that one? He’s coming home.
You slide into bed, making sure the requisite layers cover you: Comfort. Warmth. Weight. A sense of victory wells up within. You have done it. You have achieved early bedtime.
Until the moment you realize what you didn’t get done.
It had to get done.
Today.
Try as you might to get that pit in your stomach to develop into some kind of ambition, some kind of forward motion, sleep wins out.
Next morning, you spring forth, anxious to get the job done for what it’s worth, praying it will do.
You scramble in, trying to appear collected, knowing you’ve got it coming.
You don’t have to look. You can feel an “I-expected-better-from-you” teacher stare snaking its way around the reddening tips of your ears, your cheeks, your neck.
Gathering your breath, you reach into your backpack. Trembling fingers pull out the crumpled, mottled paper in offering. The reply comes.
“Comments closed.”
Something shifts within, and you are not quite sure whether you feel relief or deeper dread.
“We’ll see what happens,” the Wife shrugged as she grabbed her bag and keys.
The Husband looked up. “What’s THAT supposed to mean?”
The Wife lowered her bag and countered, “C’mon. You know that’s how it goes, right? It’s not like we have any control over what actually happens. We jump in, and then…yeah. We’ll see what happens.” She glanced out the window, at the reddening sky, at the dark figures beginning to assemble and approach in the streets below.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a second,” the Husband said. “What’s this about we? I’m not leaving this apartment, and I’m not about to have you out there – out in all of that – knowing that something – that anything – could happen.”
“Well,” the Wife chuckled, “it’s not like anything could happen. I’m just saying that we don’t know what will happen. There’s really only one way to find out.”
In silent spaces between people there is often a sound. Listen carefully. You can hear the hum of the world. But in this silence, in this apartment, there grew something different. This sound was rising, thrumming, pulsing. At first it was a single, gentle tone, then it crescendoed and diverged, moment by moment and note by note, until it seemed as though it were a symphony of every instrument, if every instrument could play every note at the same time.
“Are you crazy?” the Husband shouted over the din. “There’s danger out there. Whatever’s out there-“
“Or…WHOever is out there,” the Wife interrupted. The figures out the window seemed more numerous now, and the sound was even louder.
“Whatever’s out there can’t be good,” the Husband added. Just the thought of those dark figures filled him with foreboding.
The Wife considered his words. She actually liked the sound. Yes, there was dissonance, and at first listen it sounds harsh and uncomfortable. But there is also comfort in leaning into that dissonance, of pressing into those close quarters, of getting into the tiny cracks between sounds and pushing into them, only to be pushed back. To her, it was kind of like musical swaddling.
The Wife said, “Whatever’s out there might be good or bad. We don’t know. But this music gives me a good feeling. And I’m up for finding out.”
The sound swelled in the apartment. There was not enough room for all three of them. The Husband and Wife both closed their eyes and leaned: one inward, one outward.
I always love that first day I start to notice signs of spring. Here’s a little old thing I wrote to celebrate.
The sun whispers to the spring soil, “Come out, my friends, it’s Time to play!”
Is it that they don’t hear? Are they still cold, Hiding Waiting afraid for Winter to pass? Who will be the first to break forth? Not the blazing forsythia Nor the big-headed iris Nor the overbearing peony
No.
Only humble crocus, Braver and Stronger Than its delicate petals get Credit for Breaks the silence.
Hamantaschen, for the uninitiated, is a triangular-shaped pastry filled with stuff, and it’s eaten around this time of year in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Purim. Which, for the uninitiated, is a celebration (among way too many) of how someone tried to get rid of Jews and failed.
But in all honesty? That’s not what I commemorate.
For me, it goes back to 1994. I was a student at the University of Illinois when I got a phone call from my best friend from elementary school. Her father, after a brutal fight with cancer, had died.
But before we can get into that, we have to go back to 1984, when she and I were pretty much each other’s only friend in junior high. One of the ways we’d pass the time on our many sleepovers was to bake cookies. Sometimes we’d use a recipe. Sometimes we wouldn’t. Sometimes our efforts would be edible. Sometimes they’d be downright awful. Always we ate them.
So on that February day in ’94, I returned to St. Louis to be with my friend. I wanted to help her just…escape, if only for a little while. Those of you who have been around family in a time of intense grief know that things are just that – intense.
The two of us retreated to my place to make hamentaschen. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about. I don’t remember much. But I do remember that was important time for the two of us.
So now, each and every year, when the holiday falls, I once again dig out the recipe, yellowed and food-stained, scrawled in my mother’s handwriting, and I get baking.
Baking hamentaschen isn’t just a simple mix-it-up-and-throw-it-in-the-oven enterprise. You’ve got to make the dough and chill it before you can handle it.
And then there’s the matter of filling. Some folks like to just use canned and jarred fillings – and I kind of do, using whatever fruit preserves sound good as one of my options. But I also treasure my mom’s prune filling recipe. (I know it has the word “prune” in it. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. It’s one of the most delicious things on this planet.)
So there’s the dough to make. The filling to prepare. And then each round of dough has to be rolled and cut out. Each dollop of filling has to be centered on the dough. Each circle has to be folded into the triangle, pressed down and sealed with egg whites. Then, and only then, can it be baked.
There’s something so very meditative about making hamentaschen, about getting into the rhythm of the filling and the baking, that sends me into a thoughtful mood. I think about what’s going on at school, how my kids are doing, all kinds of odd things.
But I always think about my friend’s dad. I think about what a warm and caring soul he was. How he treated me like one of his own kids. How he was always up for anything. How he was one of the funniest people I knew. How very much he loved his family. How very much my friend loved HIM.
Today’s lesson was a lesson in…what should I call it? Patience? Self-forgiveness? Understanding? Revised expectations?
I went to the gym today hoping to score a new PR (personal record) on my deadlift.
Yeah, I guess that makes me a meathead. I’ll take it.
I really wanted this one for a friend of mine, who’s been ill and going through a LOT of tough stuff. We started at my gym around the same time, and we would always joke around about how regularly – and badly!- she would kick my behind.
Now, though, she’s not allowed to lift weights. Like, not ever again. How does a 30-year-old carry that news? I can’t imagine.
So now? Now we joke around about how I’m sneaking up on her old PR’s. And the biggest one is the deadlift. As of last spring, I was 5 pounds shy of her best lift.
Today was my day to test it out. Today I wanted catch up, and to send her a video of me celebrating, and to let her celebrate along with me.
I arrived at the gym to work, and the first several sets working up my weight felt great. I built up the barbell, confident that things were going great.
And then, they weren’t.
25 pounds below my target, I stalled. I tried three times at that weight, and NOTHING DOING. In gymspeak they call that failure. My great hope for today clearly wasn’t happening.
Yes, I was discouraged. Yes, I was disheartened.
But I am also grateful to myself. I have now lifted long enough to know that there are some days I’ll have great lifts, and there are some days I’ll fail. And failure simply means it didn’t work this time. I’ve worked to be strong, and no one can take that away.
So I’ll be back at the gym soon enough, plowing ahead with whatever it is that’s next.
And as for my friend? Ohhh, I’ll catch her. One day.
Each week, I ask my writers to set an intention for the following week, and to let me know what, if any, support they might need. One of my kids asked me for some support on how to make her characters more complicated.
Well, this fourth grader also happens to be an incredible writer. As in, I wish I could employ the craft of narrative with the skill that she does. So before I rolled out all my resources I thought I’d just ask her. “What, in your mind, is a complicated character? What does that look like?”
That gave her some pause. She thought a moment, but still couldn’t come up with anything. So I asked from a different direction.
“Like, sometimes when we think about complicated or complex characters, it’s because we don’t always know what to think about them. Sometimes they say or do things that we might disagree with, and we’re not quite sure what to do with that.”
She thought more about that one. I think I was starting to get through.
I went on. “You know, we don’t always have to like the characters we interact with. But sometimes we might grow to like them as they change.”
So then she told me about the character she’s trying to create, one who had lost family members.
“Oh. Grief does make people do kind of weird things. Maybe then, this is a person who’s angry? Who does mean things to push others away?”
That seemed to get some traction. I decided to level with her.
“So…you’re a nice person. As another nice person, I think I can talk about this with you. Do you ever have times where you think about saying something mean, or you think about doing something mean, but you don’t because you’re a nice person?”
THAT got a nod. I knew it would. I know, because I’m a fellow nice person. I continued.
“So maybe this character will give you a chance to explore what it’s like to be that person who says and does the mean things that you never would. What do you think?”
And guess what? She’s going to take the leap! I told her I was pretty excited for her, and I think she may be pretty excited for her too. I also told her she’d be the inspiration for today’s slice. And at some point, I’ll let my nice-gal reputation slough off for long enough to create a mean ole character of my own.
Soapbox: The Way I see Things 