Am I ready? Am I ever?

Classes are starting in a couple days, and I hope I’m ready for them. I always feel like I’m not quite ready, but I also feel assured that none of my colleagues at the University feel like they’re ready either. It’s the lament of faculty everywhere, I guess. (Just as I started writing, something broke in one of my online course sites and I had to fix it. So much for being ready.)

It will be another semester of social distancing, because vaccines have not been widely available in the US yet. I will meet with half the class at a time again, giving the same activities to each section. Tuesday and Thursday will be my busy days. Office hours will be Zoom or live. Everything live will be with masks on.

I have gotten used to COVID protocols, strangely enough. I’m accustomed to not going places, wearing masks, Zooming. I miss live teaching, but if distance protocols are how I have to teach, I’ll keep doing so.

So I’ll be as ready as I can on Thursday when I start teaching.

For the New Year

Happy New Year! I wish the best for all of you in this new year.

2021 doesn’t feel any different so far, but that doesn’t surprise me. It never does. It’s how the year develops that gives us this feeling of a good year or a bad year.

For Americans, 2020 has been a bad year. We’ve dealt with an increasingly erratic and vindictive president, a total failure at controlling the coronavirus, white supremacy, people falling through the holes in the safety net as they lost their jobs temporarily or permanently, and a horrifying loss of morale as our relatives and friends died of corona. (Other countries have struggled with the virus, the shutdowns, the deaths. I don’t mean to say otherwise, but the US’s bungled response is worse than many, many countries. and they didn’t have a president that made things ever worse).

We want to see our families again, get back to work, pull the poor and struggling up. I am hoping 2021 is the year of healing for us.

Let me think of happier things — the blank slate ahead of us and the potential for blessings.

Prayer for the New Year

I should preface this with the statement that I don’t know that I’m a Christian. I pray to God, but I do not feel comfortable with what Christianity stands for today — a right-wing identity politics that encompasses white supremacists, prosperity gospel, and a xenophobic populace. I am, at heart, a Quaker and a progressive one at that. A large number of Christians would say I’m not really Christian, and I’ll take their word for it.

But I pray:

I pray that we implement the vaccines for COVID quickly and fairly, so that we get a herd immunity of vaccinated people (the only way to get herd immunity without a higher body count).
I pray that we find a safety net for those unemployed by catching COVID or by being let go due to COVID shutdowns.
I pray that we find compassion in our world, especially for those who are discriminated against.
I pray that this country finds a unity in behavior that honors our neighbor, lifts up the downtrodden, and aids the poor no matter their religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability status.
I pray that I find a way to make a difference in my own little corner of the world.

************

As I get older, I think differently about prayer. I believe we pray for a reason, but I believe less in that concept of deity that, in effect, grants wishes. Because not everyone’s wishes get granted — and not everyone’s wishes should be granted.

I do believe in what my good friend Mariellen said about prayer, that we give God our troubles and She hands them back in the morning with more strength to deal with them.

I also believe in prayer speaking to that of God in everyone, a good Quaker concept. What if prayer mobilizes those who hear it into action? That being said, I must be at heart a panentheist, believing that God is the gestalt of that of God in everyone, and that God speaks to the whole of humanity to see who will take the message up and create the miracle.

Therefore, when I pray like this, I speak to myself. I speak to the Gestalt. I hope someone listens.

A Time for Nothing

I’m done putting together my classes for Spring, which was my task for the winter break. Now what? My mind is all for relaxing and hiding from my work in progress, but I’ll probably do something with that during break.

I feel like I could sleep forever. I just got up and I’m already wanting to go back to bed. I don’t know if this is latent depression or I’m just so relieved to be done with the semester that I’m catching up on time without thinking.

The semester must have been far worse than I’m registering. I tend to be stoic and plow through the semester with blinders on, not stopping to lament much (other than my lamenting about lack of writers’ retreats in these pages).

And now, because of COVID, I have no choice but to relax. No visit to my dad and sister, no going out shopping, maybe a stop at the Board Game Cafe if it’s not crowded, but …

So I’m working on relaxing.

There will be Christmas

Christmas is our respite from the year of COVID.

Even if we can’t (or at least shouldn’t) visit our loved ones, even if we can’t travel, even if we have lived with this threat for months which has changed our lives, we have Christmas.

Some will have a subdued Christmas because they have lost family or friends, or because a friend or family member has ended up in the hospital because of COVID. I have one colleague with lingering symptoms and another in the hospital. Others I know have seen loved ones die.

Some will have a smaller Christmas because of restrictions on gathering size, the riskiness of travel, and the fact that hotels and restaurants are among the best places for contagion. This has been a big part of why my husband and I aren’t going to Illinois and staying at Starved Rock State Park for this Christmas.

But there will be Christmas, and there will be workarounds for friends and family. We will put up our Christmas trees, even early, because we need that color and light. We will Zoom with family and friends. We will find a way to celebrate, because we as human beings need that celebration in the grey skies of December.

Find a reason for joy this season, even a flickering moment of joy, because that is part of our legacy as humans. And if you can’t, let something lighten your heart for a moment and understand that the hurt will lessen and the memories remain.

Our Inner Child and Christmases Past

Do we as adults look for touchstones to our childhood Christmases?

My husband and I spoke about this while we were listening to Little Drummer Boy (Harry Simeone Chorale, 1959 version), the harbinger of Christmas in my childhood. I was born in 1963, but the trappings of those late 50’s still lingered in my house, as we listened to the album (33 1/3) on a 1957 Magnavox Continental console.

This is the exact make/model of our old stereo. I wish I had it because a restoration would be lovely.

My husband grew up in a town smaller than mine that still managed to have a Christmas parade, unlike mine. Both of us remember captivating displays in local businesses. He remembers church choirs, while my childhood was more secular.

We both remember Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer complete with the GE tie-in commercials, and we watch that and How the Grinch Stole Christmas and other children’s Christmas TV staples, and we still watch those every year.

We remember the iconic outdoor displays of our home towns — me, the industrial pipe frame-and-lights tree on top of the Nabisco carton factory, and he the star on top of the grain elevator. I remember a whole era of my life where I could look out the dining room window and see the tree lit in green or red across the neighborhood, waiting for my father to get home from his job 30 miles away, waiting for Rudolph to come on TV, worried about my father traveling through the snow.

We’ve made our own traditions — one of those being going to Starved Rock State Park in my hometown area to visit my dad and my sister’s family every year. Starved Rock Lodge was also a piece of my childhood, a massive log construction that existed since the 1930’s. To me it’s the epitome of Christmas, which its Great Hall sporting Christmas lights and families getting together there to open their presents. Again, a part of my past. We will not go there because of COVID, and I will miss that.

This makes me wonder if other people have this sentimentalism for the past when it comes to Christmas. Are we touched by our childhood Christmases and clinging to the traditions to keep our adult selves buoyant? I wonder this especially for this year, when we can’t have those big gatherings because of the contagion, when we put our Christmas trees out early for the colorful lights of hope.

The Relief

I finally have a break! I’m tearing up with gratitude.

This has been the most exhausting semester I’ve ever had. Not necessarily the hardest, although teaching both live and on Zoom at the same time was somewhat difficult and gave less than stellar results. But long and exhausting, waiting for students to drop in on Zoom, sitting in a empty office, scuttling from office to restroom with my mask on.

The sunny days out the window seemed so distant from where I sat, even though I have the best view on campus out my window. Then the leaden skies came, and at least they matched my moods.

There was the constant threat of COVID. There was a point where 9 out of 60 students were out over either isolation (COVID positive) or quarantine (contact with a COVID positive). The virus swept through peer groups and Greek life, and although I taught social distanced and masked, the random trips through hallways and in bathrooms worried me.

I focused on the task, knowing that thinking about any of this, much less all of this, would break me. And so I became an automaton, checking off each finished class session, each office hour. Not waiting for break, because that seemed too distant.

Now I’m here, at break, and I want to cry. After this week, I have a week of waiting for students to ask questions over Zoom (and they never do too much of this) and finals week, where their exams are essay and take home. I will be at home, comfortable, during all of this. So, in effect, I have survived the semester.

And I feel like crying.

About Time

Maryville, MO is under an emergency order which limits gatherings to ten people or less and enforces the mask ordinances because of an upswing of COVID. (It does not shut down local businesses or enforce shelter in place.)

And it’s about time. Many residents of the town have proven that they can’t comply with the existing mask ordinance, thinking that their legal rights are being impinged upon.

Hint: No, your rights are not being infringed upon; you’re being asked to do what’s good for America and your fellow human beings. Don’t you want to do what’s good for America and your fellow human beings? Then we’ll make you wear the mask because the governor is calling the National Guard out to help in the overwhelmed hospitals and morgues.

It’s not like I’m not suffering as bad as the anti-maskers are. I will not be spending Christmas with my family. I will not be in Kansas City for Thanksgiving to watch the lights. I have ZOOMed my entire semester of classes. I feel lonely and would feel more lonely if I wasn’t married. But I adhere to the rules because I don’t want to be responsible for contagion.

I’m angry right now at all the people who should have refrained from meeting in large groups with strangers, who have gone about without masks and with a bad attitude, who have ruined Thanksgiving for all of us because they kept the contagion going.

COVID Thanksgiving and other plans

Before COVID, we had plans for Thanksgiving. We had reserved a room at the Southmoreland on the Plaza in Kansas City, and we were going to brave the crowds to watch the Plaza Lighting Ceremony . We were going to window shop the Plaza for Black Friday and soak up the holiday atmosphere. (We live hours from our families and we get very little time off at Thanksgiving.)

And then COVID came.

Our Thanksgiving this year will be at home, where we are cooking an India-inspired Thanksgiving meal of tandoori turkey breast, mixed greens, sweet-potato and lentil dal, raita, chutneys and naan. And our local baker’s macarons for dessert, which are not Indian, but will have to do.

We’ll put up our Christmas decorations on Black Friday and start through our list of Christmas season videos (we have about 10 or 12 to view over the weeks). We will get quality time with our four cats. I will not be grading homework till maybe Sunday.

Maybe I need this this year. It’s been a year where my life’s been turned upside down by COVID, where I’ve had at least two mini-breakdowns to work through between COVID fears and post-election fears (and I didn’t miss a lick of work from them), where my retirement goals were put into turmoil by a change in university policy with health insurance.

Philosophically, maybe this is the year I need a break for Thanksgiving. Even though it’s just three more days of isolation (given the current COVID rates in Missouri, this is a good thing) it’s three days of festive and restful isolation to ready me for the last weeks of the semester.

emerging

I don’t know how many of you are out there, nor do I know most of your names, but know I appreciate you. I think I’m crawling out of my prickly stress coccoon, which I picture as being something like a datura shell I curl inside of, hoping for peace.

The truth is probably not as dire as I paint it, and eventually Trump will leave office. The country will start to recover despite a deadlock in the government because thank Goodness there are things like executive orders and Trump set the precedent of using them right and left. The vaccine for Corona may be ready by mid 2021, and we will be able to hug again.

I’m writing. I’m still writing, breaking a NaNo streak of failing every even year since the 2016 election. That’s only two NaNos worth of failure, but I was pretty steady before then. I think I remember what I like about writing, and I think I’ll be able to continue it.

I also remember that I may have to put the big books, the fantasy books, out there again to traditional publishers. If I get my self-promotion game going, I may be able to put them out using that route.

I feel like I’m coming back to myself, someone who does better at doing than being. Thank you for listening.