We Are Still Here

I have not blogged in six months. I have not really posted anything on social media in all that time. I try to respond to messages and keep up with news, but I’ve fallen behind with most things.

Like many of you, I suspect, my orbit has been small in these strange times. Daily life has been revolving around the day job and the kids, managing risk from the virus while trying to serve as a support system.

Writing has taken a backseat to most things, and other relationships have not been given much attention at all—not for lack of caring, but for lack of energy and hours. And self-care? Self-care is not something I’m good at. I come from a line of self-sacrificing nurturers who don’t really do boundaries. Nothing like a pandemic to hold up a mirror.

Stephen has been a good partner through it all, and Mark has been a good co-parent. Ever since I had kids, I keep coming back to that adage, “It takes a village.” It really does. I am grateful for our little village. It has taken our team of three adults to parent our three teenagers in this pandemic. Each kid has unique academic, social, and emotional challenges exacerbated by remote learning and quarantine.

There are highlights: We have a lot of animated dinner conversations. They are often the high point of my day. We pay close attention to the spectacular sunsets outside our windows. Maya has applied to colleges for next year and has already been accepted to several. Liam is making beautiful music and came in second for Student Council president in his high school election. Lana creates rainbow sculptures that dot our house, and she is my steadfast kitchen helper. They don’t like remote learning. They miss their friends. They are worried about the future. Their emotions are all over the place. They are doing the best they can.

I have heard versions of this from other parents and caregivers, or from teachers  dealing with students. The kids living in this time are not really ok. The people who are trying to help them are not really ok.  None of us are really ok.

Yet as a society, we are not good at talking about mental health or the role of it during this pandemic. People are being asked to perform as close to “normal” as possible when so little about this is normal, especially for the children and teenagers.

So we do our best, and then we often feel woefully inadequate at the end of the day.

It’s a lot. For all of us.

The caregivers trying to fill other people’s “buckets” are drained. Those confined with (and grateful for) family and friends crave a little time and space for themselves. Those who are alone are starved for contact and touch (even the introverts).

There’s a song by Florence and the Machine that keeps running through my head. The refrain is: “We all have a hunger.”

Yep.

So many needs not being met. So many people hungry.

And tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. In a pandemic. In a country raw from disparity, unrest, and resistance.

Am I grateful? Every day. Does that mean that everything is ok? Nope. Our world is not ok. Is there hope? I think so. Are there moments of grace and joy and profound beauty in the middle of it all? Absolutely. Thank goodness. Is it easy to lose sight of that sometimes? Also yes. Is there a lot of work to be done to make things better for the future? Again, absolutely.

I wanted to write something today because people have sent messages recently asking me if I’m ok, concerned that they haven’t heard from me in a long time.

It’s mostly been that thing where you have five minutes free, and you want to call a friend or write a message, but you know that five minutes is just not enough time and there’s just so much to catch up on, but nothing at all so urgent or monumental.

How do you fit an honest response into five minutes, especially if brevity is not your strong point? (And if you know me, you know that brevity is NOT my strong point.) 😉

So instead of saying, “I’m fine,” or “I’m ok,” I tend to get quiet when there’s too much to say and not enough time. I’m sorry.

This time, I wrote this. Hopefully the next post will be sooner than six months.

I am looking forward to cooking dinner for tomorrow, but I am going to miss all our family who would usually gather together. I wish we could all be with the people we love. I look forward to the time when that’s possible.

Sending love and all the hugs.

On Shakespeare, Sonnets, and Pop Songs

popsonnets

I love sonnets. And Shakespeare. And music.

When I was in college, I heard and fell in love with the music of Ralph Covert and the Bad Examples. Many of the songs come back to me time and time again, and one in particular comes to mind when I feel myself getting frustrated with a scene or character while writing:

“Every poet wants to murder Shakespeare
We’re just pissing on the grave of what went on before
And everyone invents the world the day that they were born”

~Ralph Covert, “Every Poet Wants to Murder Shakespeare”

So speaking of Shakespeare; and sonnets; and music…

When Stephen and I were at BookExpo promoting Geek Parenting, we picked up the book Pop Sonnets by Erik Didriksen. While he may not murder Shakespeare, Erik gives Shakespeare a run for his money. 🙂

We had so much fun taking turns reading the sonnets and trying to guess the original pop song. It’s such a fun and clever book. Here’s a sample:

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(You can read a few more on the @popsonnet tumblr page.)

And here are the Bad Examples for your listening pleasure:

If you’d like to hear the Bad Examples on vinyl, check out their Bad Is Beautiful deluxe vinyl release.

And to conclude, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter by the Bard himself:

Sonnet 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

—William Shakespeare

From Awkward to Awesome

For those of us who grew up in the 80s and early 90s, the brainy Encyclopædia Britannica kid from the tv commercial was an iconic image of what a nerdy kid looked and sounded like. For those of us who *were* nerdy kids in the 80s, it was an extremely familiar image. (I certainly had the big glasses.)

It’s likely no surprise that my Geek Parenting coauthor, Stephen H. Segal, was also a nerd; and when he was young, he shared enough of a physical resemblance to the Encyclopædia Britannica kid (played by Donavan Freberg), that he was quite often mistaken for the awkward commercial know-it-all.

Much later, Stephen met and befriended his adolescent doppelgänger, and Donavan turned out to be a kindred spirit. We hear enough about how people fall from great heights and notoriety, but sometimes the story is better than that. Sometimes people take the gifts they have been given and work to make this world better and more beautiful.

Click here to read Stephen’s blog post about how “This iconic geek kid “had a report due on space.” Spoiler alert: He grew up to be awesome.

(Be sure to also follow the link in the story to read the entire interview with Donavan about his legendary comedian/ advertising creative director father, Stan Freberg.)

I love the way that Donavan’s story shows how creating a space for your kids to figure out who they are can help them to eventually embrace their authentic selves. It’s a valuable reminder, and it’s a really good story.

donavan