To Keep Growing
I shared this photo on Facebook on 12/25/16 with the caption: "Wherein I cry a little that I didn't read these lines in time to include them as an epigraph in the new book. I am now determined to somehow share the title poem with Mary Oliver."
It’s wild to think that four years ago, I had just self-published a collection of poems, many of which I wrote in the midst of the 2016 campaign and election. I read "Upstream" before Mary Oliver passed away, at an Airbnb in Cambridge where Mani and I spent part of the Christmas week that year.
Contrast that with today, a weirdly warm, wet, and windy Christmas morning, sitting and reading the news. Power outages across the state. Gurneys in hospital gift shops. Dropping percentages of available ICU beds. Pleas from folks who've had Covid or lost a loved one to the virus to stay home for the holidays set against more than a million travelers passing through TSA checkpoints in airports across the country.
The last time we left town was September 2019 -- our anniversary and Mani's birthday weekend in Gloucester. For many years now, traveling hasn't been straightforward for us. We can't fly or eat out, so it takes some planning. In this way, adjusting to pandemic life was perhaps easier than for folks who were accustomed to being able to go wherever, do whatever, whenever they wanted. But that's not to say this thing hasn't infiltrated every crevice of our lives.
Two days ago, the dryer stopped working. Our landlord came over in the afternoon to look at it. He wore two masks while I stayed in the next room, a door between us, binging on episodes of Russian Doll with Aviva. At one point when Mani was outside with Chalupa, our littlest sweet neighbor asked if we had any vanilla they could borrow. Mani, masked, came into the pantry to get it; she and the landlord were in the same room for maybe 30 seconds.
Yesterday, a text from the landlord. Good news -- figured out what's going on with the dryer and how to fix it. Bad news -- his wife wasn’t not feeling well and would be getting a Covid test today per her doctor's recommendation. He’d scheduled a test for himself Monday. I wished them well and said that yes, best to wait to come back in until they've received their results.
And then, the flurry of discussion and decision points on our end ensued. Many texts followed -- Pearl should stay with his dad until both the landlord and his wife have, hopefully, tested negative. There were many questions and explanations, and suddenly I was sent reeling backwards in my own emotional development.
Something in me regressed on a dime; clear, unfettered thought eluded me. I saw myself regressing into a much younger me, one who is fearful of conflict and disagreements, wary of disappointing either of my kids despite knowing better, one who feels fully responsible for something that is in fact much bigger than me.
Self-doubt and second-guessing followed in a flurry -- was I overreacting? What should have be an obvious decision -- my son staying at his dad's for an extra however many days until we know if we've been exposed to Covid -- showed up in my body as a flustered child afraid of letting anyone down, and pointed me directly to what I'll discuss with my new therapist when we talk next after the new year. For the record, I do not expect any of this to make sense to you, reader, when it hardly makes sense to me, writing.
The pandemic has affected us all in ways we may not even fully see or understand. These show up in our emotional state, in our bodies, in our relationships -- and feel important to acknowledge. No one's life is unchanged. No one is immune to disappointment.
Whatever you might have struggled with before the pandemic has very likely been pushed to the foreground of your consciousness. At least it has for me.
In a world where there is so little within my control, here is what I can solidly account for: We went to bed early and watched an episode of The Crown, waking throughout the night to the sound of heavy rain on the skylight. Now there is a coffee mug to my left. Dog snoring in her bed at my feet. Daughter sleeping in her room. Son safely at his dad's. Wife washing dishes before making breakfast. Parents in their house, sisters in theirs, stepdaughters all grown and making decisions of their own.
A quiet day lies ahead, with no plans other than reading, eating, resting. And noticing my own internal state, vulnerable to old stories and ways of relating, and yet also a changeable thing.
Healing is always available, but wow, it can be hard. Shame rushes in uninvited, flooding the most vulnerable interstices of the soul. And so I sit here, wanting to meet myself with kindness, to wrestle -- as Oliver wrote -- with the angel, to write the poem, to be stained not with shame but with light.
To keep growing through it all -- that is the work. That has always been the work.