Shared Breath

I have sometimes thought of myself as someone already engaged in the fight for racial justice, though never enough and occasionally in the wrong ways, and like many others, I've been thinking so much the past weeks about the need for more action, for moving beyond words. Beyond and beyond and beyond. 

This thinking has been hard. And yet not as hard as it has been for many others. I am white. I live in a safe community. I have access to resources, education, money. I do not fear for the safety of my children. The hinges on which my life pivots are well-oiled. Rust-free. And they will likely remain that way whether I take action or do nothing. 

I read a blog post written by someone I knew in college on the topic of activism. Her post inspired me to think about activism in a way that might be sustainable. She wrote about needing to find an activism that sits within our strengths and aligns with a practice that brings our lives value and maybe, even, joy. 

It is a privilege, no doubt, to think about and shape activism this way, and it also got me thinking. 

I am not a social media influencer, far from it. I enjoy capturing moments that make life happy on my Instagram feed, curated as those moments may be. Facebook is a place I left, for the most part, because I never felt good before, during, or after being there. I simply do not enjoy being seen or heard in a broad way. I never have. Much as I've found fault in myself over the years for not using my voice loudly enough or on the popular platforms, I've decided to do the radical thing and accept that steady part of myself. 

Being seen and heard by a wide audience does bring value, and even joy, to many people though. It is sustainable for them because it is a strength. So let them do the work of justice in that lane. 

For me, what brings value and sometimes even joy to my life is sitting with people in rooms where we talk about hard things and seek solutions. Rooms where we look each other in the eye and hear each others' stories. Rooms where we read and learn and make a plan for the next right thing. This space of shared breath* is where I'd like to continue to do my part in the pursuit of justice. 

This realization about myself is framed by the knowledge that the road to those rooms has been paved by people marching and shouting on the streets and posting on social media; the work in their lane fuels the work in the lane I enter. And, I hope, vice versa. Sometimes it's not right for me to be in those rooms as a white person. That makes sense to me. And at other times those rooms need white people willing to educate other white people. I'm up for that challenge. 

I've reached out to the places and spaces where I have influence and have asked to be put to work, again and forever, in the name of justice, representation, freedom, and prosperity for Black, Indigenous, and people of color. It is beyond time. It has always been time. 

* Thanks a lot, Covid-19. 

Summer Sanity

The kids have finished school, the pandemic is hanging on, camps are canceled, sports are on hold, and the summer days are spread out before us like a blank canvas.

How to avoid the summer doldrums, you ask?

Intention. That's my answer. We're going to be intentional around here.

Each day of the week has a purpose inspired by mediocre alliteration.

There's Music or Maker Monday. We make things (usually with Legos) and watch Songland. That's what we did this last Monday, anyway.

Trip Tuesday. We go somewhere. This week we took the bikes out for a spin. Other weeks we will hike or play on grassy knolls or drive through an arboretum. The list is endless. Well, not actually endless because of the pandemic, but we have three weeks worth on our list.

Writing Wednesday is today, and I must say, it's my favorite so far. Eloise wrote out some sight words and is now writing with PlayDoh. Sam brainstormed some genres he'd like to write in and then wrote a draft of a found poem inspired by an annotated autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Tomorrow is Theme Thursday. We don't know yet what the theme will be this first week but Sam has suggested, "Death by Black Hole." I don't even know what that means.

Friday is Family Friday and we will play games or watch a movie as a family. Really we can do anything that day as long as it's a family thing. Kinda weak, but what else starts with F?

This is how we will get through the Pandemic Summer of 2020 -- or through the week. We'll see.

One Day, Another Day

One day I was complaining about quarantine and home school and needing desperately to be in the world and then the next day my dad had a heart attack and was airlifted to a hospital in another city with no family nearby and another day he had all five of the major arteries in his heart bypassed and another day my mom could be with him again and he was doing okay and one day he went back home to recover even though fears have settled in on him and then the next day the ICU at the hospital where my husband works filled up with coronavirus patients and I thought, here we go, and then the next day a black man, George Floyd, was murdered by a white police officer 15 minutes from where I live and 8 minutes from the full ICU and then people, god bless them, took to the streets to shout out against police violence and the systemic racism that surrounds and encompasses our daily lives and then there were riots and fires and curfews and helicopters and we watched the city burn on TV and out our windows and we read about white nationalists and we became suspicious of every truck in the neighborhood driven by a white man, and there were many, so we put our trash cans in the garage and left all the lights on in the house and we did not sleep while our children slept and we called our neighbors and took supplies and food to pop up pantries and then one day school was over for the year so we took books back to the building, crossing a line of national guardsmen to park near the front door, one of them waved to us, we didn't wave back, and then one day it started to feel quieter again and we turned off a light or two in the house, but not in our bodies, and every day now the husband shows his badge to a soldier to get into the hospital to treat the virus sick and the windows in his office are boarded up but if he looks out a window on another floor he will see that his is one of only a few buildings standing in a sea of destruction and every day I am scrolling and scrolling the social media and wondering what is my role, what is my part, where will I be heard, and writing to people and calling some and making signs with my kids but feeling too scared to take those signs and those kids to George Floyd's memorial or to march with them because of the virus that I was complaining about to begin with, and quietly, my son takes Brown Girl Dreaming from my shelf and The Watsons Go to Birmingham too and he starts reading and it is another day.

Hard Things

My 3rd grader, Sam, is a motivated and excited learner. He loves new ideas and happily shares his latest school projects.

And yet, on this, his 36th day of doing school from home, HE IS SO DONE.

He used to initiate his daily work, check off tasks with a vengeance, and display his finished assignments with pride.

Now he requires constant cajoling, reminding, settling, and checking.

We have only two and a half more weeks of school for this year, and I have adapted the mantra We Can Do Hard Things. Especially for two and a half weeks.

Maybe an acronym will help: WCDHTFTAAHW. It's kind of long and difficult, but then again, so is the week.

We Attack At Dawn

The kids have been engaging in some excellent imaginative play around here.

It involves Legos and pop music and pirate hats and princess dresses and a stuffed cat. It usually begins with one of the kids saying, "We attack at dawn." It starts after breakfast, ebbs and flows around the other activities of the day, and ends when we make the kids go to their separate rooms for sleep.

I do not grasp the full depth of it, and I love it intensely.

What The Future Holds

I have no regrets about these years as a stay-at-home parent. It's been wonderful and meaningful and also hard. This year, in particular, I have found a sort-of balance with teaching preschool, volunteering in schools, and implementing daily healthy habits of body and mind.

Sometime in late February, though, I felt the urge to look for a job outside the home again. Something in education that would offer added purpose, challenge my intellect, and still allow for the balance it took me so long to appreciate. Maybe in academia? Maybe in a school? Definitely something with a teaching component.

Just as I was beginning to sort out my thinking on what a job like that might be, the pandemic took over and an opportunity to teach Kindergarten and 3rd grade appeared. I could not pass it up. Like, literally, passing it up was not an option.

So for eight weeks now I have been supporting my own kids in their at-home learning, as both a parent and a teacher. This has been rewarding and also terribly difficult, as anyone in the same position might attest. This has also thrown my outside-the-home job search into new relief. Do I want to start a new job when the likelihood of teaching 1st and 4th grades next year is so high? Maybe. Do I want to work from home while also teaching my motivated but also needy kids? Definitely no.

So I'm sitting here in limbo, like so many others, wondering what the future will hold. Hoping that things will become clearer very soon but not counting on that either.

The Stuff That Really Makes Us Happy

Because for a minute it seemed like we might all have more time during the Great Covid Quarantine, my sister-in-law suggested we take an online Yale course called The Science of Well-Being. The professor, Dr. Laurie Santos, teaches how to be happier by applying what researchers know about happiness from psychological science.

I believe in and support science, so I agreed.

It's possible I'm missing some key take aways due to watching TV while also viewing lectures (that's what the Yale kids do, too, right?), but here's what's sticking with me so far:

1) Our intuitions about what will make us happy are totally wrong. Not only do we want the wrong things (aptly called miswanting) but we also think those things will make us happy for longer than they do.

2) There's this thing called Hedonic Adaptation, which means that we get used to things and then they don't make us happy any more. A new car, for example. Eventually (and sooner than you'd think), it's just the car you have.

3) Because we don't adapt to them, experiences make us happier than things. Even though you might want to extend that vacation, it's the shortness of it that makes it so great.

4) Our reference points, those completely irrelevant standards against which we compare ourselves, are also totally wrong and have an intense impact on our happiness. Dr. Santos has a lot to say about social media here, as you can imagine.

5) We can intentionally engage in practices that make us happier. Dr. Santos says we'll learn the details of The Stuff That Really Makes Us Happy next week. I'll be returning for that lecture. Obviously.

If you want to take this course, I'm pretty sure you still can.

These Strange Times

Blogging seems like as good a thing to do as any during the Great Covid Quarantine. It's remarkable how many things I might do, and yet I do only little bits of each thing, distracted always by the call of a child or the weight of this situation.

Overall, we're doing fine. One member of our family heads off in his undershirt and track pants each day to work at the hospital where he dons the available scrubs and PPE, coordinates the medical troupes, and treats the sick. He returns home in his casual wear and runs through an impressive disinfecting routine (which does not involve swallowing bleach). Then we carry on like it's a normal evening, talking about our days and sometimes forgetting the strange times we live in.

At home we're doing the school thing, and in a way, it's been a nice change for me. I have opinions about learning, and my kids are now my students. Sam receives my addendums to his schooling with a modicum of wonder and compliance, while Eloise reminds me she has only one teacher and it is not me.

The silver linings are abundant. We bake more, read more, puzzle more, and color our way to calm. The kids bond to one another against the common enemy of their mother (chore time!) and find creative ways to battle the boredom. We take family walks and bike rides and explore neighborhoods never before explored. We watch the sunset with appreciation.

And we carry on toward an unpredictable end, naming our gratitude for one more day of health and togetherness knowing that those things aren't available to everyone.