What We're Losing: Ruminations on Reopening, or Not

The thing about sourdough starter--what you use to make the bread--is that you constantly throw away most of it. Every few hours, you toss the majority of what you've made, and add new materials (flour, water), so that eventually you will have something worth baking with. To move forward, you have to get rid of most of what you have.

Maybe that's the reason sourdough is so popular right now (mine is cooling on the counter). It feels like we are tossing out most of what we've got in this world. My question is if what we're left with will be worth keeping, or not.

The other day, I took my kids out for a walk within the bounds allowed by law. We wound up seeing one of my older kid's classmates--she's not someone he's especially close to, though he likes her and pretty much everyone. After just a few minutes of talking with her  and climbing a homemade fort the way five year-olds do, he was GLOWING.

As we walked away, he said to me "what a great day, Mom!" because he got to play with a kid his age. She's a lovely kid, but not one of his closest friends. And no more than five minutes with her absolutely made his day. 

He's a happy kid, he's been mostly ok throughout this period, but it broke my heart that he was so desperate for time with kids his own age.

All he wants is to play with his friends. And he's 5. I should be able to give him that.

He will only get to be in kindergarten once, and he is losing that, day by day. 

For weeks after this started, my three year-old would ask "is there preschool today?" and we'd have to tell him there wasn't. I'm not sure what was worse--hearing the question, or hearing him simply stop asking.

I know kids are resilient and they will be ok, but this feels like a lot to ask them to recover from.

In the debate about when and what and how to try to maybe reopen our society, there seem to be two extremes: OPEN NOW and KEEP CLOSED. The thing is, no one is actually at the extreme. None of us think we should shut everything down and go to military lockdown for months (or years) until we have a vaccine. What kind of society would that protect? What would it do to us, and to our children?

So it's a question of how we reopen. And none of us think we should just go back to the way things were, because we can't bear the consequences. We need only read what has happened in Spain, Italy, or New York to know that we must avoid that, too. Movie theaters aren't an option right now, for even the most optimistic (or ignorant?).

We're talking about our jobs, and the economy. Those things are important--critical. We need to be able to pay rent and buy food. But the thing is that in all of this, we are losing some calculation of the other things that matter, too--the soft things that make us live, rather than merely exist.

Five year-olds playing tag and running in the park with their friends. Three year-olds singing songs with their friends. Family dinners beyond the nuclear family. Nights sharing cocktails with friends. The long weekend I was supposed to have with my Dad, across an ocean. Are we tossing too much of the world that we've built--accidentally throwing out too much of the sourdough?

I don't know what the right way is to do any of this. No one does. But our kids--even the happy, well-adjusted ones with two loving parents and enough of everything--even they are starting to be Not Ok. And at some point soon, even for the science-lovers among us, that might just outweigh the fear.

Purses, Parties, Conferences: On Mourning the Little Things During a Pandemic

There's a purse I ordered about three months ago; it fits easily over a suitcase, it's nice-looking, and it came recommended. In the first year in my job, I flew abroad for work seven times. The bag was my reward for a job well-done. It was functional, without being too much. An indulgent gift, at just the right level.

My beautiful (I imagine) bag sits in my parents' home, untouched. I wish I could have it, even though I don't really need a work bag these days.

Yesterday was my son's best pal's birthday. He turned six. It should have been a really fun day, with a party to look forward to, and even the little brother excited. Instead, we took a quick video of my boy wishing him a happy birthday, and that this corona passes soon, so they can play together once again. I wish they could play together, now.

I was supposed to go to Austin in March, and my (wonderful) manager offered for us to check out some SXSW events. It would have been a great opportunity to grow, personally? Professionally? I'll never know. The trip, where I would have picked up my bag, was canceled. I also missed the (canceled) wedding of a dear friend. I wish I had been at the wedding, wish I could have picked which SXSW sessions to attend.

None of these losses are huge. My job is safe, for now at least, and we have enough resources. No one in our family has so far suffered major loss from this plague.

But somehow, every time I hear someone expressing pain about a loss--it is always cast as "not worthy". 

What I want to say, with absolutely no authority, is this: pain is valid. It doesn't have to be the worst pain in the world to be valid. You are allowed to mourn the little things, even now, when a global pandemic rages. 

It is ok to miss the trip you couldn't take, the meal you couldn't go out for despite making reservations. I give you, and me, permission to miss the little things as much as we miss the big ones. We as humans don't just mourn the big losses, even when we've experienced them. I can wish I could have my bag, even though I've been through things one million times harder. You can hold multiple truths at the same time. We all contain multitudes.

I leave you with this observation from the brilliant Meg Keene, commenting on a question someone sent in on her wedding advice website (her writing is worth reading, whatever the topic). The letter writer's husband had almost died at their wedding, and while she was glad he was alive, she was also sad she missed her wedding, a relatively "small thing":

"We actually had a big conversation in our office about the terrible-ness of the suffering olympics when this question came in. When my dad fell WALKING HIS DOG, and got a terrible brain injury, and I had to drop everything to care for him (while caring for two kids and running a business) for three months, and then he suddenly died anyway from hospital mismanagement I kept like I needed to say like, "Well it could have been worse."

WELL LIKE YEAH. EVERYTHING COULD BE WORSE. That's what survivor's guilt is. Even people who survive the worst atrocities known to human kind are like "it could have been worse, because I survived and other people didn't."

And I feel like we're in this place in liberal feminist culture where we feel EXTRA responsibility to disclaim all of the reasons that things could be worse and we have privilege at every moment. And those things are true. And we know those things. And in big picture political conversations we should really consider them. My dad had insurance. I want everyone to have insurance. California has paid family leave. I want everyone to have paid family leave. I can go on and on.

But there is a time to put that aside I think, too. It's call grief, and grieving, and we're all human and we all deserve to have it in it's pure rawness. My dad DIED and he should be alive right now playing with his grandkids and talking politics with me and he's NOT. The LW's husband almost DIED and it was horrific and traumatic (I've been in those asthma attack car rides with my son, and they are trauma that will live in my soul forever.) And she should have had a WEDDING and she didn't.

So fuck all the mitigating circumstances right now, fuck the "who has it worse", fuck the "I'm so privileged that I even have this problem." FUCK ALL OF IT. Something terrible happened when you should have been experiencing one of your greatest joys, and I am SO SORRY, and we see you, and please just let yourself feel whatever you need to feel, and not pick yourself back up till you're ready and then do LITERALLY WHATEVER you and your partner want to do.

I'm sorry sister. The world is a hard damn place, and I'm sorry this happened to you, and I see you."