Pandemic postcard #36: Thanks for the memories

This week's post comes a little early as we usher in this strange holiday season. I wish you all as happy a Thanksgiving as your current circumstances allow.

In 2010, I reflected on the most memorable Thanksgivings I'd had so far and was surprised to realize they'd all been in my 20s. What a difference 10 years makes. Today, I can easily remember how I spent  every single Thanksgiving from the past decade. This feels good at a time of life when my memory is supposed to be fading. 

It's 2011, the first of several in a string of Thanksgivings spent in San Francisco with my brother Jeff and his partner Kevin, both skilled and loving cooks. Such good food, such good company. On Friday, Jeff and Kevin treat Bruce and Natalie and me to a visit to the California Academy of Sciences. A butterfly briefly rests on Kevin's hand. He is the butterfly whisperer.

2012. I have lived in the Bay Area for seven months, decamping there from Idaho just after Dad died. The job I've moved here for is a disappointment, but I absolutely love California: the light, the people, the diversity. I am living a long-held dream of not needing to own a car, but I rent one to fetch Natalie at Humboldt State for her Thanksgiving break. We join Jeff and Kevin and Bruce for another memorable meal. 

Thanksgiving morning 2013. I am at the Oakland airport, nearly giddy with anticipation at seeing Tom for the first time in a few weeks. We share Thanksgiving with Jeff and Kevin and sleep at their place, since my Oakland apartment is packed up. The next morning, Tom and I pick up a small rental truck, meet a packing crew, and get on the road to Seattle, where I've rented an apartment to be closer to my love.

2014. It's just Tom and me this year. We take a morning train to Centralia, WA, and enjoy a leisurely midday dinner at McMenamins' Olympic Club, where the buffet is spread out over several pool tables. We retire to our room upstairs and take a long nap. It is a perfect day. 

Tom and I get two Thanksgivings in 2015. The first is in the Denver suburbs on Sunday, with Tom's brother Marty and his family and a bunch of people from the bar Marty owns. Tom plays his dad's old banjo. On Tuesday, Tom and I board Amtrak's California Zephyr at Denver's Union Station and ride over the Rockies for Thanksgiving #2, with Jeff and Kevin plus Natalie, who has flown down from Boise. 

Thanksgiving 2016 comes a few weeks after Tom's stem cell transplant, and it's just the two of us celebrating at Swedish Hospital. Considering that he had almost died from engraftment syndrome four days before the holiday, Tom is doing much better. I dial up Paul Simon ("These are the days of miracles and wonders ...") and Arlo Guthrie on Spotify, we eat the not-too-bad-for-hospital-food Thanksgiving dinner, and we are grateful. 

2017. I don't have specific memories of this holiday--my most recent one in San Francisco--apart from the warm embrace of family, of building a collaborative playlist, and of gathering around the table for another amazing meal. Of course, we watch Love Actually afterward. This will be Tom's last Thanksgiving. We don't know that yet, but after the wild ride of Thanksgiving Week 2016, I don't take anything for granted.  

2018. It's a weird year. Tom has been gone four four months. Kevin and Natalie both work in the plant-care field and Thanksgiving season means poinsettia distribution. We decide to make it easy on Natalie this year and meet at a rented Airbnb near Boise to mark an early Thanksgiving. I spend the actual holiday handing out food and socks at the Union Gospel Mission in downtown Seattle. 

2019. I have plans to see Natalie in Boise just before Christmas, my extended family in Chicago on December 24 and 25 (for the first time in decades), and Jeff and Kevin in San Francisco for New Year's, so I'm at loose ends on Thanksgiving Day. I consider a solo trip somewhere, but I stay home and make myself a simple dinner. I'm OK company, but I'm grateful that I'll be with family for Thanksgiving 2020. 

2020. Except I won't. And neither will most of you.  

Sigh. And yet, and yet. This past decade has shown me that a rich storehouse of memories and an attitude of gratitude can serve us well in times of loss. Meister Eckhart said, "If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that would suffice." And a day before he died, Tom mused to me, "Maybe just being grateful and happy is enough. So thank you." 

I'll leave it at that for now. I am grateful for shared Thanksgivings past, I look forward to making more memories in person with my beloveds in the 2020s, and I wish the same for us all. 

P.S. If you are new to Surely Joy, or even if you're not, you may want to revisit my post from this week in 2018, when I wrote, "This is a season of living while we wait to resume life." Those words, true for me in 2018, are true for us all this year. There will be better days--and yet these are the days we'll remember. 

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Pandemic postcard #35: Hindsight and foresight

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been, 

A place that has to be believed to be seen ... Walk On, U2 

"Understanding the pandemic this week requires grasping two thoughts at once," Robinson Meyer wrote yesterday at The Atlantic. "First, the United States has never been closer to defeating the pandemic. Second, some of the country's most agonizing days still lie ahead."

We do seem to be at a pivot point. Clearly, we have several very dark months ahead, especially if the outgoing administration continues to impede an orderly transition of power, and if people gather over the holidays with the virus surging. At the same time, the good vaccine news of the past two weeks signals that by next spring, our long-sought "new normal" should finally arrive.  

How will we be different, as people and as a society? I revisited my first pandemic journal the other day--I'm now on volume three--and found what I'd written at the end of it, in mid-May, in the form of a letter to myself next May. 

Of "the things I'd love to see made manifest," one will happen for sure: We will "have a new president and leaders who are actively planning to manage future crises in a more proactive way." But I thought a vaccine wouldn't be "nearing production for widespread availability" until next summer, and we seem likely to beat that timetable now. The results of the upcoming Georgia special election will likely determine whether my prediction of health care for all--maybe via an Affordable Care Act expansion-- will happen in 2021. But thank goodness that the Supreme Court, even with its two-thirds conservative majority, doesn't seem inclined to overturn the ACA as we emerge from the greatest public health crisis in a century. 

Alas, as I write this, schools that had reopened are shutting again, and it seems unlikely that many will remain open this winter. But there's certainly hope that by spring, in-person learning may be happening anew. I'm not sure what to make of my prediction that kids might only go to class every other day; I guess that is for social distancing, and it may be happening in some places. Ever-shifting schedules seem like a hardship on families. Then again, many parents may be splitting their work time between home and office, so maybe it could work. And let's all have more art and music supplies!

Some more mixed news: Greenhouse gas emissions are down largely due to COVID, though this year's bad wildfires mean emissions aren't down as far as they could have been. And with car sales on the rise and people shunning transit, long-term progress could be marginal. We must find the will to make progress toward a healthier planet without the devastation of a pandemic. 

As for my vision of a life where "rest, creativity, community, and connection are paramount" and where work is less central to our lives, that still seems like a dream worth hanging onto, and one that we might be a little closer to than I'd imagined in May, before the murder of George Floyd. That horrific event and its cataclysmic aftermath launched a reckoning that continues to reverberate as we ponder our individual lives and our collective destinies. Why are we here if not to love life and love one another?   

This Thanksgiving season, I am thankful that we may soon be emerging from one of the darkest chapters of history. I love this quote from Pema Chodron: "Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know." In hindsight, we've all learned a lot this year, and with foresight, we may put some of it to good use.

Pandemic postcard #34: Life as one big art project

February: I did not see this coming. My daughter Natalie announces on social media that she has recorded an album, and I spend my next-to-next-to-last night in Guadalajara marveling at her nine-track Something to Harvest release on BandCamp. Performing as "Fine Hands," Natalie wrote all the songs, played all the instruments, overdubbed her vocals, even painted the cover art. One of my favorite lyrics becomes all too poignant within a few weeks: "I know you said handshakes give you anxiety. So give me your hand, I'll hold it still as can be."

March: It's a few weeks into the pandemic. "Give me something small to paint," Natalie writes on her Instagram story. "Self portrait but as a snail," writes one friend. "A lone backroad under the stars at night," suggests one, and another wants to see a cat playing drums. My request is for "the tiny sea creature of  your choice." Natalie paints and posts a series of watercolors, and they're all gone within 24 hours. At least I get some screenshots.

April: Natalie does her hair and applies theatrical makeup, dons a velveteen green pantsuit, becomes "Boo Boo the Fool," and posts photos on social media, all in the name of amusing herself and her friends as the weeks of social isolation turn into months.  

May: It's Mother's Day and I'm opening my gifts on a Zoom call with Natalie. One of them is the original watercolor from her Instagram session, the little horseshoe crab she painted for me. It's one of the best gifts I've ever received.

July: It's Natalie's COVID birthday, and she makes the best of it, baking herself a beautiful cheesecake garnished with berries and mint and candles. Her creativity extends to the domestic life, from artful cookery to inspired thrift-shopping.

September: In another Instagram story, Natalie posts pix of her latest "Sunday Craft Day," little heart-shaped earrings that read "Love They Neighbor" and "Abolish ICE." (In addition to her artistic ventures and holding a full-time job, Natalie has dedicated hundreds of hours this year to speaking out for racial justice. I have learned much from her--and from other young adults in my life--on that front, too.)

November: A week ago Tuesday, I get a text from Nat. "Putting up holiday decor while watching election coverage to try and balance the vibes," she writes. Natalie has always loved Christmas, and by last weekend, her apartment was a wonderland of lights and music and good cheer, and why not? We all need all of the above this year more than most. 

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I'll accept a tiny bit of credit for Natalie's creativity. I played in a band and we recorded a single when I was her age, I introduced her to The Beatles when she was little, and I dragged her to art museums even when she really didn't want to go. Her dad is musical, too, and he brought home big rolls of newsprint for her to spend hours coloring and drawing freehand on the living room floor. She has had many other mentors along the way, including Karen, who ran a storefront art studio for kids in Twin Falls, Idaho; the music department at Boise High School; and the creative community she has claimed as her own as a young adult, in Boise and beyond. No one creates in a vacuum, and we all have abundant inspirations and influences. 

But what thrills me about Natalie's creativity is that so much of it is self-directed and self-generative--she never spends much money in pursuit of her muse--and she follows through. Plenty of us dabble in creativity. Natalie, more than most people, embodies it. If I have one resolution for the rest of this pandemic period, it's to be more like my daughter. I want to spend fewer hours worrying about the future and more hours producing joy through music and art and random reveries of fancy. 

None of this is frivolous. All of it is life-affirming and counter-cultural, signaling to society that happiness can be made, not bought, and that each of us has the ability to live life like it is one big art project. Short of a residency on Kauai (unfortunately not in the cards), I can't imagine a better way to spend the long pandemic winter ahead.

Pandemic postcard #33: Loving the half-full of it

My sweetheart spent most of his adult life as a proud teetotaler. When asked about his aversion to booze, Tom would describe how he'd had too much to drink one night as a young man, and while it wasn't the first time, he decided it would be the last. Yet sometime in his last few years, he bought a bunch of drinkware and stashed it in the back of our bedroom closet.

Months after he died in 2018, I was still deep into the long work of sifting through Tom's stuff: dozens upon dozens of boxes of old receipts and legal papers, shelves full of compact discs (he'd made a living first in radio, then in choosing music for businesses), and bags stuffed full of promotional items, trinkets, and tchotchkes. When Tom discovered something he liked--be it a Justin Trudeau bobblehead, home plate-shaped doormat, "Enjoying My Coffee" bumper sticker, or a movie about the criminally forgotten songwriter Doc Pomus--he'd order it in bulk, keep one for himself, and give the extras as gifts, except sometimes he’d forget about them. 

That’s how I came to find the six “half-full" glasses. Designed for the eternal optimist, only the top half of the glass could be filled--the bottom half was sealed off--so it would automatically be at least half full. I wrapped up the glasses as Tom’s last gifts to us, and when Tom's children and their mother and her husband and my daughter and I gathered on Christmas morning, we drank a toast in Tom's memory.

It's been a half-full week for America. After two years and $14 billion spent, the 2020 U.S. presidential elections has essentially ended in a draw, and there's a 50 percent chance you are disappointed by the results. We've now been more or less evenly divided for decades and there's little indication how--or when--we'll break the deadlock in Washington, D.C., never mind between the blue metros and the red retros.   

For many of us, our thirst remains unslaked. We'd dreamed so long of a resounding rebuke to the mean, fear-mongering, self-centered bully who has held the presidency these past four years. Amid this year's reckoning over racism, we were sure tens of millions of Americans would turn out as never before to vote for love and justice, and we did. But anxiety and dread were on the ballot, too, and their appeal was just as powerful to folks who may be feeling more half-empty right now.

And so here we are, pretty much where we started, except the kinder candidate has apparently prevailed in the presidential contest. Given all that Joe Biden has endured in his life, it's little surprise that he's bearing this time of uncertainty with patience and calm, and that is what our battered country needs now and over the next four years. While we will not fully realize the changes many of us would like in these divided times, at least our nation can rejoin the world community and make progress on the margins at home, especially for the most marginalized.

At a post-election vespers service the other night, my minister told the story of a couple in the church he served early in his career. Long unable to have children of their own, they finally became parents, but their daughter was born with developmental disabilities. They chose to love her and raise her as if she were perfectly and fully human, and so she surpassed the life expectancy and limits she'd been dealt. Likewise, my husband spent his last decade living with multiple myeloma, yet Tom's glass was always at least half full, and often spilling over the brim as he threw himself into passion projects like launching a community radio station in the last years of his life and embracing a new romance despite previous disappointments.  

Half of America feels wounded over the election results, while the other half are saying "meh," but it doesn’t have to be that way. In this time of mingled disappointments, as we continue to deal with COVID-19 and a faltering economy, may we choose to see possibility over peril, lift repair over despair, and--knowing the infinite promise of this country--declare an end to our hostilities. Together, let's raise a glass to freedom and love the half-full out of this broken, beloved nation.