2020 in BOOKS!

“And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?” 
― Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales

As Dylan Thomas's incisive Miss Prothero understands, the thing to do, in the face of disaster, is read.  

And so I did.  As the global pandemic pricked, then burst, such former quotidian pleasures as conversation, embracing loved ones, Zumba, and the communal coffee pot, I buried my nose in one book after another, leapfrogging my reading totals from previous years.

As a result, I read a lot of really excellent books- which made winnowing this year's list unusually harrowing.  I also fell into the clutches of some very, very bad books, from which I feel it is incumbent upon me, as someone who is otherwise fairly useless in a global pandemic, to save you.

So here goes!  

2020 HALL OF SHAME:

Where the Crawdads Sing: Your grandmother made a quilt from discarded Justin Bieber posters, and then she put it out in the rain until it began to mildew, and now you have to eat the whole thing.

In Five Years: One long series of product placements!  Plus cancer!

The Rent Collectors:  White, male, Utah-based author pens the heartwarming story of a young Cambodian mother who transcends her life of grinding poverty thanks to the gift of literacy.  (No need for snark here; the truth is enough.)

2020 HALL OF FAME:

Best Book For Wringing You Out Like A Wet Washcloth: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb

Do you know how many tears fit inside your body?  Prepare to find out!  Lori Gottleib's Maybe You Should Talk To Someone sounds boring (a therapist talking about therapy....I'll just lie down for a minute on this couch, shall I?).  But it is utterly engrossing, a searing meditation on what it means to be alive.  

Best Book About Reincarnation: Life after Life, Kate Atkinson

Reincarnation is right up there with "...and it was all a dream" in the pantheon of Very Bad Literary Ideas.  But, stupefyingly, Atkinson makes it work.

Best Book About Spontaneous Combustion: Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson.

This one stuck with me.  Possibly because it is full of people catching on fire.

Best Book Set in Kamchatka: The Disappearing Earth, Julia Phillips

Have you ever read a book set in Kamchatka? I had not.  This series of interlinked short stories felt ever so slightly debut-y, but the writing was clear and elegant, the setting was fascinating, and the plot had wheels.

Just Really *xZjxg*Good: The Dutch House, Ann Patchett

Is Ann Patchett a genius?  Does she have a cadre of sentient monkeys chained to typewriters in her attic?  Who cares; you should read this.  It's big, chewy, oddly old-fashioned novel, nominally about a house, but really constituting the compassionate, painstaking dissection of a family organism.  It's fantastic.

Best Book For These Sad, Distracted Times: Olive Again, Elizabeth Strout

Strout writes (has always written) exquisitely, but exquisite writers are not so rare.  What's more unusual is Strout's generosity: She's one of the few writers these days who accepts, and even rejoices, in the full human panoply.  We are many things, we humans: petty and loving, cruel and ridiculous and kind, and in Strout's fiction those qualities are tightly and beautifully braided.   In 2020, a time in which we are encouraged to doubt the humanity of those who think differently, to cut out "toxic" people and excommunicate those who misstep, Strout's message is redemptive.  To paraphrase the very wise Bryan Stevenson, we are all more than the worst of ourselves.

2020 HALL OF OTHER THINGS I READ THAT WERE GOOD BUT THAT I AM TOO LAZY TO EXPLICATE:

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family; All Adults Here; No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us; Normal People; Redhead by the Side of the Road; Writers and Lovers; 28 Summers; Miracle Creek; Troubled Blood; The Vanishing Half; Peace Like a River; Red at the Bone; Play It As It Lays; The Last Flight; The Night Watchman; The Cracks In Our Armor

40

I have been very lucky, but I have wasted much of was given to me.  I have squandered my yard. have made mistakes I regret, and regret, and regret.  I hurt people; I have been hurt. I am loved insufficiently; I love insufficiently. All the usual human failings- we are nothing if not predictable.

I lack the energy, and courage, to muster a crisis, but midlife consumes me anyway.  I am not sure what to make of where I am, but I am here.

Thanksgiving 2020

It's a weird one.

I woke up grateful, so it's only natural that it went downhill from there.  My oldest is furious about something (anything?) and spent the better part of 1.5 hours screaming and crying, some of it whilst perambulating around the neighborhood so as to better maximize public humiliation.  My youngest has decided not to nap.  And my husband is the world's worst kitchen parter, nitpicking, complaining, asking passive-aggressive questions, and generally getting in the way, all while contributing nothing of actual utility (I've known this for a long time, and it is why we cook separately; unfortunately the kitchen doors do not lock). 

Everyone is "napping" right now, which means that no one is sleeping, but we have all retreated to our separate corners.  Everyone will probably be more civil when we come back together, plus by then it will be a couple of hours closer to bedtime.

But even in the midst of this domestic bliss, there is much to be grateful for.  The obligatory: we are healthy, we are solvent, there is pie.  And the bonuses: My daughter sings in her crib.  My son loves to make his sister laugh.  I am making a decent living at a vocation I believe in and enjoy.   I grew up with love, and I am passing love on.

This particular COVID Thanksgiving, when I must keep my distance from everyone outside of my immediate family, I'm also finding myself reflecting on those moments in which people outside of my household -strangers, friends, and acquaintances- have given me something charged and precious, some vision or warning or advice that inflected my life, showed me how to be or what to do.

K, telling me her vision of me, blazing and brave.  H picking me up in the rain. Professor B, taking me out to lunch and telling me I didn't want to be a musicologist (I didn't).  N showing me how crouch calmly under the table when the SWAT team began to roll past the coffee shop.  My student E gripping my hands the weekend I was waiting on my son's muscular dystrophy test, telling me things would be different, but OK.  C, one of my first students at my very first workshop, who told me I was a wonderful teacher.

We change the direction of one another's lives glancingly, unconsciously. We hit and run, hustling past our impacts, never entirely perceiving what we are to one another.  We are molecules, drifting and jostling; we are nothing much.  We are everything.

Almost November

I'm getting both numb and maudlin; the combination is strange and not particularly appealing, like milk and orange juice swirled together in one glass.  (Yes- I have tried that.  Haven't you?  How could any self-respecting lover of breakfast not preside over at least one marriage between these two morning stalwarts? The experiment wastes food but offers valuable lesson: some couples curdle one another.)  

I go to bed tired.  I wake in the morning tired.  I devote large swaths of Internet browsing to attempting to ease the pain in my neck.  I learn what my trapezius is, and how I am likely abusing mine, and how it is too late, far too late to do anything sensible about it.  I put on weight.  I abjure the structured pant.  Outside, the pandemic is roiling and raging.  Should I buy a scented candle? I am going to die; all flesh is grass; I am not sure a scented candle will be of much utility in any kind of grave/ afterlife situation. On the other hand, I would prefer the scent of pumpkin to the scent of not doing much of any cleaning.

Numb; maudlin.

What has happened this month?

We passed one-year anniversary of my father's death.  I do regret not being there when he died.  I knew I would regret it, but I stayed home anyway.

We learned we would be virtual schooling for the foreseeable. I was furious with the school board, but more on principle than out of any personal distress; W is kicking along OK.

W and I took a trip home.  We stayed in an airbnb twenty minutes down country roads, the trees flaming, gunshots echoing through the hills.  We donned masks and ran around with my family outside.  My brother announced he is getting married.  It felt lonely and strange, but also uncomfortably wonderful- like stepping out onto the ocean to view a lighthouse from the sea.  I saw parts of my hometown I had never seen before and won't again.  My brother is someone to someone.

There is a whole world outside my door; there always has been.  

Retreat

I never understood why people went on retreat.  Why put yourself through the stress of travel when you could hunker at home?  COVID has opened my eyes.  When you never leave home, and when you are never alone, the desperation to be somewhere, anywhere, else mounts.

This is why you find me, today, $300 poorer than I was last week, holed up in an Airbnb one mile from my house.

It is bliss.

This is my second night; tomorrow I drive home in time to get my kind onto his school Zoom at 8:00.  The first night, I sat and stared at the wall of the guesthouse for a long time.  Then I went out into the garden and stared at the garden.  I watched the sunset.  I got up and went back inside and wandered up and down the stairs, into and out of all the rooms, the silence ringing in my ears.  I ate dinner at 4:30 PM and was in bed by 8:00.

In the morning, I felt peppier.  This was freedom!  I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted!  And what I wanted was to watch Welsh police procedurals at 6:30 AM!  I did that for a while.  I ate breakfast exercised and ate a second breakfast and decided to go hiking.  Why have I never hiked alone before?  It is the best thing.  

I came home and finished a book and tried to nap a bit and began to get antsy.  I was living the dream!  This was the life...!  Whatever I wanted, I could do, and I wanted to....work.

So I did a bit of long term planning and reflection, both on some career projects and on how I wanted to react, going forward, to the rest of the pandemic.

Looking back, it's a clear recovery arc- stupor, then bacchanal, followed by boredom leading to reflective productivity.  I needed this.  

I also realize now how much the fact that I am never by myself anymore is a kind of chronic trauma.  I miss myself.  I am great company.  I miss quiet and ease and reflection. 

I don't know what to do about that, other than perhaps booking my next retreat.  January 2021?

Wait, what day is it?

William started virtual school.  It went better than I expected, because his school actually got off its duff to provide synchronous instruction this year.  (I'm glad all the energy I put into loudly bemoaning the lack of synchronous teaching in the spring was justified?  It's always nice to know that your untrammeled whinging had a point.)

School in general is made for kids like William.  He loves structure, assignments, and conformity.  I'm worried about some of these characteristics in the long term, but in the short term it's an easy ride.

What else is happening?  

-A smattering of the first days that give one an inkling that there might, at some distant point on the horizon, be something other than summer.

-Donuts.

-I have muted the most egregious virtue signalers in my FB feed and it has made me much happier.

-Lots o' teaching, as per usual.  Now that I only have one career, it's trickier to separate my sense of self from it.  Still learning to navigate this.

-Margaret is getting to be excessively two.  

My Pandemic Weeks-ish Undefined Amount-ish of Time-ish

Say what?  Time has passed?

I forgot this week that I am not yet 40.  I feel 40.  

I remember my father's 40th birthday party, which was a surprise party, the only surprise party I think anyone in my family has ever thrown, because we do not like surprises.  Specifically, I remember hiding on the blue carpeted steps waiting for him to walk in the door.  I must have been three or four, and it was thrilling, if unsettling.  Even more unsettling is the knowledge that 40, once you are on the approach or coming in for the landing, simply does not feel that old.  Childhood was yesterday!

What has happened since I last wrote?  

-Margaret threw up in the car on rural roads.  We have to drive several miles to find a place to pull over, strip her down, and shellack the car with wet wipes.  Parental achievement unlocked!

-I needed a vacation from our vacation.  

-We've really gotten into a rhythm with my oldest, who wanders around playing by himself and reading all day. This rhythm will be imminently disrupted by virtual school.

-We visited Lafayette Park, and you know, all I can say is that it is sad when gazebos become thrilling

-We also went to an orchard and picked apples.  One of those quintessential normal family things, except we've never had time in the past because of the volume of work we used to do on weekends.  It was fun, but I'd rather have my old life back.

-I ordered an international snack subscription, because what else is left to us in this life?  Cheese of the month club may be next.

-I'm very much enjoying no longer being a member of my local mom's FB group, which basically consists of progressives virtue signaling to one another while shaming the rest of us and exhibiting startlingly hypocritical blindness to their own privilege.  Who would have thought I would become so crabby?  (Oh, wait, everybody.)

-I do believe this election is a battle for the soul of our nation and I've decided to funnel all my charitable contributions toward electing Biden for the foreseeable.  

-I can't remember any books I read anymore. The make almost no impression, like a fire walker slipping across the flames.  It's scary, but convenient in terms of cost savings.

My Pandemic Week

I have started a Facebook group for pandemic cruciverbalists, and so far we have managed to discuss a shocking number of crossword clues between us.  Does this count as an accomplishment?

I don't remember much from the beginning of the week, because it was much like the beginnings of other weeks.  David is more irritable than usual.  I wonder sometimes if it is tiring, being that affronted by so many small things.  It certainly exhausts me. What does he get out of it?  He must get something out of it, or the behavior wouldn't persist.

Or maybe that is a behaviorist's daughter's blind prejudice- that, over time, we only engage in behaviors that reinforce themselves.  Maybe we are just mad beasts making noise.

In other marital news, we have, when in the car, started a stealth battle in which the holy grail is to turn on the other person's seat heater without that person noticing.  It is the most fun I have had all week.

We are on vacation now, two night at a small cabin in nowhere, MO I found on Airbnb.  As we drove down over pot-holed, graveled hairpins, we passed a rifle range filled with men shooting.  It was like the exclamation point at the end of a long, tangled sentence full of rotting barns and dilapidated trailers and confederate flags.  You think this milieu is made up for the movies, but it isn't.

 As ever, in parenting, being on vacation consists of doing a whole bunch of housework in an unfamiliar locale. I miss gigs.

But it is nice to have an excuse to read during nap time, and to drink a gin and tonic on the porch, and to force oneself, for the minute one has between cleaning up other people's crap and serving them the raw material to make it, to sit and listen to the birds and whine of bugs and the suck and slop of the river: summer sounds, still here as the world crumbles.

My Pandemic Week

Even my complaints about the sameness are the same.

I miss being alone.

What happened this week?

I am buying book after book for my kid, because they take him completely out of commission, like darting and elephant, but in a virtuous, skill-building kind of way.  Also I enjoy seeing him enjoy books, so I keep wanting to give them to him, book after book after book, though I know I need to ration them.  I've tried reading all day as a lifestyle choice; it makes you weird.

I gave up on our parks tour this weekend; it rained Saturday and on Sunday it just felt like a chore, so we walked to the neighborhood park instead and Margaret attempted to kick the ball and William kicked the ball; and then we got hot and walked back.  Sometimes you just need to do what you haven't recently done.

We had Mellow Mushroom pizza, which reminded us of the Mellow Mushroom pizza we usually only have on vacation.  

I read a fantasy novel for book club; it reminded me that fantasy used to be all I read.  It's odd how thoroughly I went off it- most of my childhood interests are still active in one way or another, but that one, which was fairly consuming, seems to have simply died.  Then again, I am not longer into dinosaurs, either.

I am boring even myself with this catalog.

My Pandemic Week

This was the week we found out there will be no school for my son, and that once more, we'll have to take on the extra full-time job of educating him on top of everything else we do.

I am not going to pretend I took it well.  I was really excited about this upcoming school year- I'd finally left my part-time speech job, so I was going to have only one career, and the space and time to invest in it and help it grow.

Not it will be survival.

But what we did, other than that?

Everything blurs.  We wandered through Suson park on Saturday morning- a million degrees, the sky boiling, the pond full of dead fish.  Sunday there was squalling in Blackburn park.  I do like my "collect the parks" idea; there is literally nothing else to do.

I am also trying to make a clearer demarcation between the week and the weekend.  This is something I've never had, because the various cycles of my work overran traditional boundaries, but I think the cycle of work and rest is something I need, and have been missing.  Some small difference in the texture of life.

Week #4,970,994

It's funny the tweaks that matter with kids (with people?)

Unlike my youngest, who demanded "GO TO SCHOOL. MARGARET'S SHOES" at 7:30 AM, and proceeded to drop to the floor and bawl when I told her it was Sunday, my oldest has a lukewarm relationship to adventure and outings.  If I simply say, "let's go the park," I face a protracted effort to get him into his shoes and out the door.

For him, you need an added ingredient, some element of mission.  My son is not even one shred an explorer.  Instead, he is an eager executor of instructions, a dedicated ticker of boxes.  Much like his mother, though it pains me to admit it.

So my tweak for him is a checklist.  For every park we visit, we get to check off the appropriate box.  Slowly, we're collecting the parks of the metro area- square by square, tick by tick.

This week we visited Columbia Bottoms on Saturday  (crowded floodplain, sunflowers, mighty Missouri), and Shaw Park on Sunday (money, racing from bench to bench, pleasant flowers, secret paths).  I am in theory enjoying these visits; they get us out of the house, which is something.  And some of them I truly enjoy, but it depends on the mood of my oldest.  Saturday he was sour and anxious, whining at every deviation from expectation; Sunday he was charming and enthusiastic, holding his sister's hand and showing her all the secret corners of the park.

In other news this week:

We had Mexican takeout.

David went back to "church," insofar as the church was open for private prayer for fewer than 10 people Sunday morning.  Only two or three people showed up; he played the organ anyway.

Margert is transitioning to twos on Monday.  On Friday, I had to report an unmasked staff member in her new room.  I'm nervous.

I'm furious with the unthinking privilege displayed by the #onlywhenitissafe folks.  All that energy should be directed toward #makeitsaferightnow.  Just because you can work from home and form a pod with your fellow upper SES-ers, perhaps hiring private tutors to support your children, doesn't mean everyone can.  Schools are vital lifelines to many; we should be doing everything in our power to open them, at least for those who need them.

And it's such a double standard: Daycares have been open across the US for months; there has been no massive outcry to close them Why?  Because daycare providers are low wage workers, and more likely to be minorities; k-12 teachers are wealthier and whiter.   I KNOW that is where the disconnect originates.  And of course low wage childcare workers will be the ones to pick up the slack if schools stay closed.

Being agry is so draining.  And so useless.  And it (once more) pits me against the progressive tide (no clue why progressives are glossing over the profound consequences of closing K-12 schools, but they are).  I'm sick of feeling so alone, politically.  What has happened to all the people who want left-wing policies implemented with logic, pragmatism, balance, compromise, moderation, calmness and compassion?  Where have all the reasonable people gone?

What else?  I did laundry.  I taught many lessons and a webinar on breathing.  It was a really solid webinar. I am good at what I do, though of course I could be better.  You can always be better; I find that both humbling and inspiring.

My Pandemic Week

Last week was the same as the week before, which was the same as the week before, etc. etc.

But I will try to effect differentiation:

1) We had a nice time at Tilles Park on Saturday.  Margaret is an explorer- so unlike her brother.  She plunged fearlessly up steep slopes and down hills; tried to brain herself on bleachers; leaned out over the water.  We saw a fountain and got very close to ducks; we watched a family catch a fish.  The sky was a very deep blue and the breeze made everything bearable.

2) There is such vitriol around school reopening.  I predicted this at the outset -that we would open the bars and shaft the children- and I am so very sorry to see that I was right.  The thought of having to attempt remote learning next year is making me nauseous.  The region's plan is supposed to be announced next Monday, so we'll see.

3) We're watching chicken run at night.  I cannot seem to keep my attention on it.

4) My herbs are giving me great satisfaction.  They perch just outside the back door.  I've made a pasta dish with them, and David has made some drinks.  Why don't I do herbs as a matter of course?  Oh, that's right.  Because I'm away and they die.

5) I've booked an exorbitantly expensive two-night stay in the middle of nowhere for early August, because the sameness is so very oppressive.

6) I need more social contact but reaching out makes me so tired.  And everyone is full of anger and fear.

7) More than a week ago, but we did hold a Zoom birthday party for Margaret.  It was nice.

July 12

If I were someone else, I would tell myself to get a project.  Something to work toward to break up the monotony.  I an not sure what that would be, which is perhaps telling.

July 9

I am definitely in a funk.  There just seems to be no end in sight.  Every day and endless loop of the same.

July 6

This life seems endless.

I finally understand why people voluntarily book and take vacations.  You need something to break the pattern, change up the endless march of days.

I always complained about the uncertainty of the cobbled-together, freelance life, but I didn't realize how much I relied on it to provide me with variety and novelty.  This is probably an obnoxious question to ask, but do people with regular jobs and regular lives get used to the unceasing grind?  Or are they just more practiced, and thus better, at finding ways to vary it?

June 19

I think about my Dad almost every day, in stray bits and pieces.  It really is as if, after so many years of shoving thoughts of him away because they were too painful, his old self is drifting back to me memory by memory, mote by mote.  

Today I thought about my father's financial care, guidance, and wisdom. In high school, he opened a bank account for me and taught me how to write a check and balance my checkbook.  He opened a credit card for me so I could start to build credit and taught me how to pay it off in full every month.  And when I had my first job as a teenager, he opened a Roth IRA for me and contributed the amount of my earnings to get me started.  Before I turned 20, I had credit history and a retirement account. 

I didn't understand how valuable any of this was, or the extent to which it showed his love, until it was too late to meaningfully thank my Dad, and I'm sorry for that. But I'll try to do the same for my kids.

June 1

We sent Margaret back to daycare today. I recognize my feelings as post-traumatic, the same visceral slackening I've felt after staggering off of bumpy airline flights and navigating through other, worse, trials. Apparently my body experiences at-home parenting as trauma.  I am not surprised.

The other kid is still here, but one six year-old is so much less of a grind than one six year old competing for attention with a one-year-old.

I feel bad that it is Margaret, who was the only one of us to flourish under quarrantine, who bears the brunt of our family's needs.  And I feel bad that we are exploding her, and ourselves, and her caretakers to this risk.

But wow, it's quiet right now.

May 19

I think one of the things I find so difficult about this is that I feel that, once more and forcefully, I am being told what it means to be a"good mother."  A good mother stays home.  A good mother sacrifices her professional life to mitigate risk.  A good mother does not mourn her work life or her personal time.  A good mother does not prioritize her vocation.

I resent this mightily.  I do not want to stay home with my children.  I never have.  I value my work immensely and I resent being told to give it up, or at least give up doing it well, for "what really matters." Yes, children really matter.  But my work also matters.  My inner life also matters. And I don't see anyone going around shaming men into giving up their jobs to marginally mitigate risk.

It reminds me of the immense societal pressure to breastfeed, and how damaging I found the imperative to sacrifice my time, effort, and sanity on the altar of "good motherhood."  There is a strong vein of sexism in the liberal, upper-SES parenting world and I'm tired of pretending it doesn't exist.

 

May 10

I should stop reading the news, but I can't.  I should stop and eating carbs and junk, but I can't.  I am worn down and sad.

Nevertheless, it has been a good enough Mother's Day so far.  I have never had a "real" Mother's Day, in the sense of a day of ease, breakfast in bed, a special fuss.  David has worked every single Mother's Day I have been a mother, and I have frequently been out of town as well.

So this morning he made sourdough pancakes, eggs, bacon, strawberries, coffee, and then cleaned most of it up again, and that was nice.

William wished me a Happy Mother's Day and has been as decent as he can be right now- nice between bouts of halfhearted hitting and kicking.  He read Margaret a book she wanted to have read to her and played trains with her on the carpet; he is sweet underneath all the drama and anxiety.

I only worked a little bit today, and I may not practice.

Margaret spends her naptime yelping and singing to herself in her crib.  She is irrepressible, and one of the only joys of this long period of pain has been getting to know her better.

May 9

We bought this house because there are two window-box rooms on the back side of the house, glass on three sides, angling out toward a wall trees.  They used to be porches, but we've gussied them up, slapping on heating and cooling and double paned windows, so now the downstairs room is my office, alternately chilly and too warm. And the upstairs room is a sleeping porch that opens off the master bedroom.  It's almost empty- one chair, one daybed, one bookshelf.  But you can lie flat on the narrow mattress and stare out at green and the sky.

It's fine.

May 8

I just want something to change.

May 7

Each day blurs into the next.  I live for the brief moments I have away from my children, in which no one is demanding anything of me and I am alone.

At the same time, I am so much enjoying Margaret.  I have been delighted by both of my children at one.  One-year-olds are congenitally charming, and they adore you, and it is fun to watch them learn to express their small, concrete thoughts.

William, on the other hand, is a chore.  He holds all of us hostage with his moods and endless demands.  I hate the voice he uses -stretched thin, panicked- when, say, we are late bringing his water cup to the table.  I hate being screamed at and hit, even if the hitting is not in earnest.  I hate that I don't trust him with Margaret.  I hate that it is a struggle simply to put on clothes or shoes, and that we can't walk down a sidewalk without screaming because one of us gets ahead of him slightly, or behind him, or, or, or..... I feel abused and furious.

This has built slowly.  I used to be able to meet him with compassion and quality parenting. But lately I am just done.  I am sick of having to tiptoe around him.  Nothing works.  I am coming to where I dislike my own child, and that is sad.  I adored him for those four easy years we had, but since then he has been much tougher, and I think now it is just too much for me day in day out with no break, ever.

If camp starts up in summer I will probably send him, even though I will be anxious/ guilty about it, simply for my sanity.

April 18

A couple of notes:

The next wave of economic destruction is heaving into view.  Artists, freelancers, and low-wage workers were first, but now some of my friends and students are starting to be furloughed or fired..librarians, IT workers, researchers, faculty members.  It makes me sad, and low-grade nervous for my husband's job.  My online teaching at this point I think will survive, even if some students fall away...but that could be overly optimistic.  This pandemic has been worse than my expectations at almost every turn- and I am a pessimist by nature.

My mother snapped a picture of where my father's memorial oak tree will be planted in Bryan Park.  It is a lovely spot, next to a bench and a small creek; he would have approved.  I hope that someday I get to visit it.

I continue to be profoundly thankful that he is already gone.

I did have a couple of nice moments in lessons this week.  I watched a 96-year old new student pour his heart into Bach's Air on a G String, and I talked with a longtime student about the eternity inherent in chaconnes-their harmonies were repeating before you were born; they are repeating now; they will be repeating after you die.  I think she found solace in that, as do I.

April 17

I have basically lost all hope for the future. This crappy existence will be all we have (until my husband loses his job, in which case we will also have terror.)

I have pinpointed that a lot of my misery comes from sensory overload, which is impossible to remediate in a home with two small children and a husband who insists on turning on all the lights and music all the time.

April 11

Out of curiosity, if you stop being the competent/ responsible person in all areas of your life, do other people step in to pick up the slack?

April 10

First it was a few weeks.  Then a few months.  Now people are talking about doing social distancing for a few years.  It is profoundly disheartening.  Yes, we are saving lives, but there comes a point at which the tax, in terms of death & suffering, of social distancing itself will come due.

Stray thoughts:

It is never quiet.

Yesterday I went out to start my car.  That was a big event.

At some point in the future, I will have to cut my son's hair.

Margaret is living her best life.  It is interesting to see, because the rest of us (Mom, Dad, big brother) are clearly debilitated to greater or lesser extents. But Margaret wakes up delighted every morning, and largely stays that way.  She is 100% here for quarantine life. At age one, maybe all you need of the world is your home.

April 8

I am unaccountably filled with rage.  At the usual suspects -Trump, the sorry, sycophantic opportunists of the GOP- but also all the gratitude-spewing, smug, stay-at-home boosters I know, in person and online. I'm glad you are finding being trapped in a never-ending Groundhog Day with no break, ever, from small children, manageable and sometimes pleasant.  Stop sharing it with the rest of us.  And childless people:  I do understand you are experiencing quarantine with no children as difficult, and it is difficult, but stop scolding parents for envying your life, because I promise you, it IS a solid league harder to do this with small kids- you just don't know.

I am usually able to muster compassion and empathy for other perspectives, and somehow, right now, I cannot.  I desperately need a day to be by myself.

Instead, the baby is crying.  Again.

April 6

There is a curious despair to seeing no endpoint to your daily routine.  No festivals or gatherings or vacations; no first or last days of school; nothing to differentiate one grieve slog from the next.  Two years of this I cannot fathom, but I am beginning to think that is what we have in store.

It is perhaps this lack of differentiation that is making me cling all the harder to those very few shifts I know will arrive.  In eight weeks, I will be done with my SLP job.  Oddly, despite the decimation of my music career, I still feel good about this shift. I simply don't have the brain capacity anymore to be pulled in different directions.  This may be a sign of my impending cognitive decline, but I have to meet myself where I am.

So that is one very small thing to look forward to.

April 5

I have lived an eternity in two weeks, during which I have discovered about myself that which I always feared-- namely: If given more time in my domicile, I will be not one shred more motivated to clean it.

Upticks: Drinking, frantic consumption of the news, from-the-jar Nutella consumption.  Also, the pitter patter of little feet now transmits to me EXACTLY as the two-note opening horror theme from
Jaws.

Downgrades: Real pants,

March 21

First day of Spring.  It is snowing.  Figures.

I know I have much to be grateful for during this time, like relative youth, a house, a lack of major financial instability.  But I'm too grumpy to be grateful.  I hate being a stay-at-home-parent with a fiery passion, and being a forced stay-at-home-parent who is also trying to work is worse.  I hate the constant demands on my attention, the endless household chores, the constant sensory bombardment, the company of the immature, the lack of ability to produce any creative work, the fact that parenting is never done and can never be crossed off, mommy, hey mommy, mommy mommy MOMMY.  This sucks balls.  And the people who are telling me to enjoy myself or woman up can go suck balls, too.

March 20

I last posted March 10, and that was literally the last day of (uneasy) peace before the floor dropped out from under us and revealed the dystopia beneath.  The walls are closing in; we are headed into dark times.  I am anxious and depressed, but I find it ironic that I am less anxious and depressed, sitting here in the middle of social isolation and a global pandemic, than I was when we had bedbugs.  The bedbugs were my responsibility, and I was alone with my pain and fear.  The pandemic does not require as much decision making of me, and I am one of millions.

Still, it's a terrible ride.  I am viscerally reminded of being on a bumpy flight, scared and unable to evade the experience, only unlike the flight, I don't know when this will end.

March 10

It's grey and brown outside today, and lukewarm, like poor-quality tea.  As I prepare to leave my job, I am running through my last few days of PTO, and I took one, today, so I could vote and prepare our taxes and do six loads of laundry.  (Six is a sight exaggeration.  It is five.  But six sounds better.  Will I ever stop sacrificing substance for style?) I also swept the stairs and changed the furnace filter.  Life in middle age is one long party.