A year ago, I used to write routinely. Most days I would wake up, grab a cup of coffee, sit down at my computer and write for about an hour or so. If you would have asked me back then, I would have said that writing was an essential part of my daily routine. And then, just like that, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I am not sure if it was the isolation of the pandemic, if it was not being able to see my family and friends, if it was the falling out that I wrote about in my last blog, the constant and relentless news coverage showing the killing of George Floyd , or if it was the impact of all of those things, but I found that at some point in 2020, putting one foot in front of the other was all I could do – nothing more, nothing less. At some point, I realized that the last time I felt this fogged in was when I lost a child and was left paralyzed by a deep sense of loss and grief. So, I did the only thing I could think of to do. I took an inventory of all the areas of my life that were important to me and cut out anything that didn’t work. I kept only the things that fed my spirit.
I have spent the past year creating art and sending cards. I am pretty sure I spend as much in cards and postage as some people spend eating out. Turns out that, when you do not leave the house, and you have even the smallest ability to be creative, suddenly everything looks like it could be something else! I have an Ethan Allen catalog that I have used to send love messages. I have created photo cards to send and I can draw Penelope, the dinosaur from the book We Do Not Eat Our Classmates. Somehow I am the proud owner of tiny little bottles so I fill them with glitter and send them to people. I am a huge Flying Edna fan and I don’t want to tally up what I have spent buying cards and gifts from them in the past year. If you have not seen their website, you must promise me you will go there as soon as you are done reading this. They write from the heart and their messages remind me that we have more in common than we sometimes think. The same is true of Em and Friends, another card company, that creates a much more whimsical line of cards incorporating humor, sarcasm and real-life experiences. Sending cards has kept me connected when I didn’t have the mental energy to pick up the phone and talk.
And then there are my grandchildren! Man, oh, man! If you want to play the role of the hero in your own life, grandchildren are where it is at!! As a parent, I remember being continuously concerned with the children’s safety, with finances, with getting dinner on the table, with getting some kid to some game, while getting some other kid to some other game, college costs and a whole host of other parental fatigue. Somehow, those decades were simultaneously the best years, where I felt fully alive and excited about life and, in other ways, those years are a huge blur. Parenting created a chronic level of physical and emotional exhaustion that seemed like it would never end, but was then suddenly gone. Grandparenting, however, is an entirely different world. It is a state of perpetual grace that is granted by the space between generations. You know, minus the real-life concerns of parenting, I have all the energy in the world to do the important things in life. My perspective has changed in ways I could never have predicted. For instance, as a parent, I threw the empty cardboard rolls of toilet paper away. I saw them as garbage. NOW, I know that empty toilet paper rolls are actually what you use to make things like super heroes, villains, unicorns, princesses and pretty much anything else you can imagine. I keep a variety of adhesives in the house because glue itself is not fitting for all projects. My closets are filled with art supplies, science projects, soft-fluffy pillows and little notes with “I love you” written in preschool handwriting!
I have also read a record number of books, listened to more podcasts than I can count, and have watched more mindless TV than is good for anyone. Almost none of the above were action-filled or intense in any way because I didn’t have the emotional strength to tolerate suspenseful story lines or shoot-‘em-up scenes where people were being massacred. It seemed like everywhere I turned, the message was what is wrong, what is going on in the world, why the Democrats are right (or wrong) and why the Republicans are right (or wrong), what’s wrong (or right) with the vaccine and everything in between. At some point, I said no. A real hard-stop NO! I declined conversations that focused on the negative, that were the same topic over and over, stopped watching the news, filtered my social media accounts and put the whole world on alert! If you are not up to something, if you are not creating something, if all you want to do is to complain about your life or life itself, no thank you. My cousin-the-sage says, “When you talk to someone, you think about how you feel afterwards and how you feel afterwards will tell you who is worth having in your life.” I’m telling you, truer words were never spoken.
Sadly, I said good-bye to a lot in 2020. There are people who were very important to me that I no longer see or hear from, or I see and hear from them very infrequently. It isn’t like there is a “something happened” but more like something that stopped happening. There were things I did regularly, attending a gym to workout, regular shopping trips to HomeGoods, keeping a regular schedule of activities, that went right out the window. My fancy office that I loved, gone! I didn’t renew the lease and, so far, I have no plans to sublet an office in Princeton where I have practiced for the better part of twenty years. My twice a week stops at Whole Earth, Ace Hardware, Tuesday Morning, all places that I loved wandering through are all also gone. Poof! Just like that! No longer important to me. I wish no ill will to anyone, I hold no resentments towards any of my previous life and some of it I almost miss, but certainly not enough to do something about it. These days I get up without an alarm, have coffee with Hubs, work, create, walk, listen to books, hang with the kids, visit with life-long friends and cherished family members and then, rinse and repeat. One of the things I love most about my tiny pod of people is the kindred spirit of experience and compassion. There is nothing any of us can actually do for the other, but we show up with a reserve of empathy, understanding, flowers and herbs picked from our gardens, movie and book suggestions, crisp white wine served in imported crystal heirloom glasses paired with herbed brie on thin slices of French baguette. As I said, it doesn’t change anything, but their steady presence sure does help with the courage to accept the things I cannot change.
So, here I am firmly planted in 2021. And, in the spirit of full disclosure, 2021 has not been a walk in the park either. In fact, in many ways, for me personally, 2021 has brought with it far more personal change and loss. Even though I miss pieces of my previous life, I can now see that the time I took to rejuvenate and restore my spirit has helped me build a much-needed muscle to, as the saying goes, rise up from the ashes. I am much more comfortable with sadness than I once was, and I’m okay with what Hubs calls a little early morning emotional instability. Turns out, sometimes a little time to cry is also good for the soul. I find comfort in the garden where I pick flowers to arrange in Mason jars and place around my house, or cutting herbs for homemade pesto, or cleaning out a closet, or, geek that I am, listening to a podcast about the latest brain science research. This is me in 2021! Alive and well, a little worse for wear, counting my blessings, finding joy in the day-to-day routine of life. And, overall, if you were to ask, I would say I am among the luckiest people I know.