This Week’s Moment of Happiness Despite the News

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

My 7-year old granddaughter, Maya Mae, discovered string games this week. You remember string games – where you would tie a big string into a loop, wrap it around your palms, and then make figures with complicated twistings of string and fingers, like Jacob’s Ladder, Witch’s Broom, Japanese Butterfly, Open Gate, and play games with more than one person, like Cat’s Cradle. Maya’s mom found a string for this on sale at work, and she remembered her own string games (she likes the Witch’s Broom) and so she brought it home. Maya learned the Witch’s Broom pretty quickly, but then, as she showed me, it became about wrapping the string around things, crumpling it, and doing all sorts of stuff to it.

I told Maya that I played with string too. And my big thing was Jacob’s Ladder, though I played many games of Cat’s Cradle.

When I was eight or nine, I was home sick with strep throat. In my home, even when my brother or I were sick, we had to be out of bed by 9:00 in the morning, so my mother could make the bed. There was no such thing as an illness so dire that beds couldn’t be smoothed and made up. So that day, my second or third day home, I got up, pulled on my robe, grabbed a book, went out to the living room and stretched out on the couch. I was covered with a special “home sick” blanket and my head rested on a special “home sick” pillow that were left in the closet when they weren’t used.

It wasn’t long before I was bored out of my mind. I couldn’t get on the floor and play because I was “sick” which meant stuck on the couch. My mother watched soap operas, so daytime television was stupid. I finished my book in no time flat. And you can only draw so many pictures. My mother was cleaning the house, as she did every day, and so there were no board games. I didn’t yet know how to play solitaire.

After lunch, my mother brought me a piece of string. She tied the ends together so it made a loop. Before she gave it to me, she put it on her own hands and showed me how to make a Jacob’s Ladder, the only pattern she knew. Cross fingers, drop thumbs, drop pinkies, grab first string, tuck over second, in and out and up and down, and suddenly…there was what could be a rope ladder between her thumb and forefinger. “It’s Jacob’s Ladder,” she explained. “He uses it to climb to heaven.” And then she taught it to me. It took a few times, but I got it.

And I was enthralled. I could hold the Jacob’s Ladder up and imagine all sorts of stories involving climbing ladders. I could carefully lay the ladder on my lap, without losing its shape, and turn my fingers into people and animals who used the ladder for escape and adventure. I didn’t need my toys, which were put away neatly in my closet, waiting for the day that I would be well enough to play on the floor again. Fingers. String. That’s all I needed.

And now my granddaughter, stuck at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had a string too.

My daughters, now 33 and 19, both went through string phases and I enjoyed it with them. I bought them each a book called Cat’s Cradle, which came with its own colorful, durable string and a bunch of recipes for different games and figures. And now…here was the string again. I went online, found the book, and had it delivered to Maya.

In the meantime, a photo of her appeared, with the string wrapped around her ankles. With or without the book, she was finding her way, and this string, in the middle of massive technology, was capturing her imagination.

It made me think of other things I did as a child, that kept me busy in so many different ways.

*Jacks. I never played Jacks the way you’re supposed to. I thought it was silly. I tucked the ball away with my other balls and focused on the jacks, trying to get them all spinning at once and imagining a great ballroom of dancing couples, or a stage filled with ballerinas.

*Another Jacob’s Ladder. Five wooden blocks, held together somehow with elastic, and when I tilted the first in a certain way, it streamed down like a clacking waterfall. I have one of these now, with the blocks painted to look like books, and it’s a wonderful way to spend a few moments in thought.

*Yoyos. Marbles. They came out every spring.  I had a purple Duncan yoyo that I loved. And there were cat’s eye marbles, peeries, and steelies. Mine had names, and I never played for keepsies because they were family.

*Fishing with a stick, a string knotted at the top, and another bent nail for the hook. No bait. No fish. Who cared?

*Collecting rocks. I never had a rock tumbler like many of my friends had, though I asked for one every Christmas and birthday. But I collected rocks anyway and kept them in an old cigar box that my mother originally used for her art supplies, then passed on to me. Those rocks were jewels to me. And sometimes, they were characters, set up in complex scenes to match the story going on in my head.

Watching Maya with her string, I felt shot through with joy. It took the sting away, a little bit, of not being able to be there with her. But I did go downstairs and dig through the junk drawer until I found a spool of string. It was just plain string, not colored, not thick, but I cut a length of it, tied the ends together, looped it around my palms, and made Jacob’s Ladder. I watched my fingers fly, then smiled proudly at the result. There goes Jacob, climbing the ladder to heaven.

It’s all still there, you know. The joy of simple things. And especially the joy of something in your past connecting with a child of the future.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Well, here we are, still in the pandemic, still shut down, still not really sure what’s happening or why. Add to it that, at least in my little part of Wisconsin, we are being blown around by a wind so fierce, it feels like it should be connected to a severe thunderstorm, but it isn’t. From my little office on the third floor of my home, I’ve watched birds get blown off balance, into walls, and straight up into the air like feathered fireballs. My dog has taken to being permanently under my desk, where her weight will suddenly shove me backwards and where she is in constant peril of my running over her with my chair’s wheels. Several times last night, I stared out my darkened windows and shouted, “Will someone please turn off the wind????”

It’s a very weird life right now.

And I’m still thrown by watching the television commercials and other forms of advertising declaring, “We’re all in this together,” and then looking on social media and the news where we are all tearing each other apart. I’m not sure who this “together” is, but it’s certainly not “us”.

But still. While a lot of things have ground to a halt, one thing has moved forward in my little world, and that’s the building of the new City Hall just across the street. It’s going to be a large building, with lots of windows. It’s on a hill overlooking downtown Waukesha, and even now, before it’s finished and  throughout its construction, it’s impressive. I’ve been like a kid sitting on the curb, watching the building go up. There have been huge cranes and beams and men teetering like Legos on upper levels.

As the framework went in and windows appeared, one right after the other, floor after floor, those windows were covered with a transparent, but cloudy plastic. Lights went on inside and they remain on 24 hours a day. One night, as I sat in my recliner in my living room, watching television, I glanced away from yet another “We’re in this together” commercial and looked out my window. The new building glowed quietly, but in one window, I saw something strange. A dot and part of a swirl. From the second floor of my condo, the view was partly blocked by the parking garage, and so I puzzled over this, but then let it go when my program came back on.

Eventually, I went back upstairs and crossed the floor of my office to turn off my computer for the night. And there, through my windows and deck door, I saw the complete picture of that dot and swirl.

Someone put a huge smiley face on one of the windows of the new City Hall. It beamed over Waukesha like a weird smiley Batman signal. The glow of the lights inside the building turned the space a gentle yellow and so the smiley face took on the classic appearance of the original simple smiley face, created by Harvey Ross Ball way way back in 1963. According to an article in the Smithsonian Magazine, Ball, a graphic artist, was commissioned to create a graphic to raise morale among the employees of an insurance company after a series of difficult mergers and acquisitions. Ball finished the design in less than 10 minutes and was paid $45 for his work.

The article said that the image was created to make the employees smile during challenging times and it worked. And on this night, in the middle of a pandemic, I looked out at a smiley face on an under-construction city hall and I couldn’t help but smile back.

The smiley face has become part of my day and night now. During the day, the lights inside the building are ineffective, but the smiley face is still there, white on transparent plastic, and he grins at me and the rest of Waukesha from across the street. I grin back. At night, he glows. I look at it first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

Last night, I was hit with night #4 of insomnia. I spent quite a bit of time sitting in my office, my chair turned toward the window, and gazing at the smiley face, which at that time of night/morning, seemed to be smiling only at me. It kept me company. It smiled through the dark. I smiled back.

During a pandemic, I’ve learned, the weirdest things become lifesavers.

I am actually dreading the day real windows go in to the new building. I wish I could find out who put the smiley face up there, and I wish I could find out who I could ask to carefully cut the plastic out of that window panel and give it to me, when it comes time to replace it with glass. When that smiley face disappears, I think I’ll feel like I’ve lost a friend.

But to whoever the construction worker is who put that smiley face on a high floor, backlit with glowing yellow lights, letting it smile down on all of us and giving us the opportunity to smile back during a challenging time…thank you.

And Harvey Ross Ball, thank you too. It’s still working.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Well, we continue living under the auspices of pandemic. It’s not an easy time. People are afraid of the virus, afraid of losing their loved ones, afraid of losing their own lives, afraid of losing their jobs, afraid of losing their businesses. I swear I can feel the shimmer of fear and tension in the air when I go outside. I can definitely feel it in the grocery store and the pharmacy. And I can feel it on the interactions in social media too. Last week, I wrote how we’re trying so hard to put a humorous spin on things. This week, I noticed a huge uptick in anger. Unfortunately, we’re striking out at each other. Those that believe we should continue to keep our states closed are arguing with those that feel the states should be opened up. There’s finger-pointing and name-calling and it’s just a mess.

I’m not above all of it, that’s for sure. I’m afraid for my family that is out there working in this, as essential workers. I’m afraid for my business. Lots of sleepless nights this week.

And yet one thing came through loud and clear. I want to see my granddaughter.

When my oldest son was the first of my four to get married, I wasn’t fifty years old yet. I didn’t want to be a grandmother. In my mind, I kept seeing Grandma Walton and that white-bunned woman from Looney Tunes who owned Tweety Bird. I wasn’t that. I told my son, “If you make me a grandmother before I’m fifty, I will remove the apparatus that made me a grandmother before I was fifty.”

Maya was born when I was fifty-two.

And here’s the thing. My resistance to being a grandmother began to fall away before she was even born. I was with my son and daughter-in-law for one of the ultrasounds. Today’s ultrasounds are phenomenal, and suddenly, on the screen in that darkened room, there was that little face. And she was smiling. Everything in me reached for her. Oh, there she was.

And then she really was there! I was allowed in the delivery room and I saw her being born. I saw my son holding her, saying over and over again, “I’m your daddy! I’m your daddy!” And I held her before she was even an hour old. It causes me to tear up even now.

Throughout her seven years, she’s convinced me that being a grandmother is the best role ever. From her mispronunciations (trees = srees, chocolate = swocwate) to her astute observations to her love of neatness and organization to the constant “Guess whats?”, she has wrapped me up and wrung me out. In one of the original Today’s Moments, I told her she was a fashionista, and when I explained that this meant she expressed herself through her clothes, she stood up straight, thumped her chest and declared, “I am ME!” Oh, yes, she is!

And suddenly…I can’t see her.

I delivered her Easter presents to her front porch and waved at her through their picture window. She stood on the back of her couch so I could see all of her, from head to toe. I stood on the lawn. Any idea how much I wanted to just charge through that front door?

But I didn’t. It’s not safe. For her or for me.

This week, her mother mentioned that Maya seemed stressed. Maya was worried. From a 7-year old perspective, which isn’t that far from everyone else’s, she just knows there’s something that’s making people really sick and she can’t go to school anymore or see her friends or extended family. My daughter-in-law said, “I think she just needs to see that those that she loves are safe.”

And so on Sunday, I began meeting with Maya through Zoom. I dug out a book that I loved when I was her age – yes, I still have it, that’s how much I love it. And on nights when I’m done teaching by 8:00, I read her a chapter.

The first thing she told me when she lit up my screen was that she was organizing her art projects into her art organizer. Ohmygosh.

So…she’s not in front of me, in the flesh. When I say, “Gimme a kiss!”, I’m not presented with that little smooth cheek, since she hasn’t figured out that she’s supposed to be kissing me, not me kissing her. But I love the grandness of her presentation. Now, I can’t touch that little cheek. But I can see it. And I can see those cheekbones perk up when she smiles.

I hear that voice. I hear that giggle. And I see those amazing big, big eyes.

It’ll do. It has to. For now. This will get better.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

I think I’m probably going to struggle with this one, because I’m not quite sure how to express what I want to say. It’s hard because, among other reasons, it starts with heartbreak. My heart broke when I read a Facebook post by my daughter-in-law.

This is a difficult time. It’s not just COVID-19, though of course that’s at the core of it. It’s the political chaos that has resulted, plus the conflicting and unending reports and articles and theories. While the entire world is experiencing the same thing, our own personal worlds have shrunk as we not only stay at home, but we see less and less reasons to go out, because everything is closed. And we have to worry if those closures will result in calamities for our favorite businesses. And when you own your own business and that business provides your family with shelter and necessities…well, let’s just say the worries have been more than overwhelming for me and for many others.

I’ve seen, though, that many of us are working our way through this with humor. We post memes and videos and satire about the pandemic, about its treatment politically and medically. I spent days watching a lip-synching video done by a father and daughter, with a brief glimpse of Mom, that always left me laughing and jiving in my seat. I think we’re working hard to keep our spirits up, to try to ease discomfort and fear, to keep on smilin’. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Except when it starts to bleed over into hiding normal feelings and reactions, and that then makes those feeling normal things feel abnormal.

My heartbreak? My daughter-in-law posted on Facebook, “I’ve been having fits of crying every other day out of nowhere for 4 days now. Is anyone else experiencing things like that or is it just me?”

Are we laughing so hard now that we aren’t letting each other know that we’re scared? That we’re sad that our lives have been turned upside down? That we’re worried for our families, for ourselves, for friends, for all the people in our lives?

Amber is far from the only person who is breaking down every other day. She’s one of those we’re calling frontline workers, working in a grocery store. Of course she’s sad and scared. So are we all. And I think it’s time we admitted to it.

So many in my family are in customer service. My husband Michael and daughter Olivia work at Farm & Fleet. My son Christopher is at QuadGraphics and his wife Amber is at MetroMarket. My son Andy is the bakery manager at a Pick’N’Save. They are all out and about. I’m able to hunker down, and my daughter Katie, a math instructor at the University of Louisiana – Lafayette, is hunkering down too, with her husband, who is self-employed. But they’re in the middle of a hot spot.

My world has become about worry. Everyone’s world is about worry. And yet we’re laughing.

Which, overall, is a good thing. But not to the point of having to ask, “Is it okay to be sad? Is it okay to be scared?”

One of my biggest meltdown moments (so far) came a couple weeks ago, when I realized I misunderstood the Flatten The Curve! approach. I thought we were flattening the curve so that less people would get COVID-19. No, I was told, we’re flattening it so that the illness is stretched out over time, and our healthcare system doesn’t get overwhelmed and we have time to come up with how to treat it and develop a vaccine. I was told, “This won’t be over until everyone gets it.”

I flipped out. I became completely fatalistic. I wanted to run to the nearest ICU and grab the hand of a COVID-19 patient and rub it all over my face. I wanted to scream, “Get it over with! Let’s go! I’m on the high-risk list three different times, so let’s just give it to me and get the horrible death over with!”

Yeah. Meltdown Supreme. Not pretty. I began sleep-walking. Sobbing at random times.

It would have helped to know that I wasn’t the only one dissolving. Everyone seemed to be dealing with it just fine, laughing away on social media. I laughed away too, in between the tears. And in between laughing and crying, I had to wonder if I wasn’t going totally around the bend, because everyone else seemed okay.

And then came my daughter-in-law’s quiet question. “Is anyone else experiencing things like that or is it just me?”

Thank God for that quiet question.

“It’s not just you, Amber,” I told her. And then I began to talk to others. I found that, behind all the laughter and the fun posts and the weird questionnaires and polls and jokes and gifs and whatever else we’ve come up with, there was a large group of people, if not the entire world, who felt this way. And we needed to acknowledge that and lean on each other.

Laughter is great. I came across a meme that made me blow a mouthful of water all over myself. It showed one of Vincent Van Gogh’s self-portraits, his self-sliced-off ear carefully turned away from the viewer. From his remaining ear, a mask dangled. And over his head was one word: “Fuck.”

Ohmygod.

I shared it and more and more people laughed. But we’ve also come together to share fears and tears, confusion and concern, anger and shock.

Thank you for being brave enough to share your tears, Amber. Thank you for reaching for reassurance.

And…we will get through this.

Yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

A couple days ago, I was sitting at my kitchen island, quietly eating lunch and reading, when a sudden squeal of feedback shrieked from down the hall, followed by a BA-WANG!

The dog fled up the stairs.

My daughter Olivia called, “I’m going to practice my electric guitar. I need to use my amp.”

I thought of my daughter’s other instruments. The sweet violin. The classic sound of acoustic guitar. The twinkly plunking of the ukulele.

But she was practicing the electric guitar.

“Okay,” I said.

Last semester, my daughter was in her dorm at college, happily moving through her freshman year. She brought all of her instruments with her, except for the electric guitar. Amps weren’t allowed in the dorm. And so the beloved pink electric guitar has been sitting, with its amp, in hibernation, at home. This semester, she’s still in college, still in her freshman year, but thanks to COVID-19, she’s back at home and her classes are all online.

So now, the electric guitar. A benefit she could reach for that wouldn’t be at college.

“Okay,” I said again. The dog remained upstairs. I munched on my egg salad as I listened to her twang a warm-up. And then…and then…

The First Noel.

I sat back. The First Noel, a Christmas carol, was being played on a pink electric guitar, drifting down my hallway, in April. During a pandemic. During a quarantine.

“Okay,” I said again.

You know, everything has just become surreal. Toilet paper disappearing moments after it is stocked on shelves. People wearing homemade masks, and those masks quickly becoming basically a fashion statement. All over Facebook, photographs of folks with masks, their eyes smiling above them. Eating dinner out…in. Dropping off my granddaughter’s Easter presents on her porch, then waving at her through the picture window and calling, “I love you.” Having to imagine the hug. Smiling at the photo my daughter-in-law sends me of Grandbaby Maya Mae holding the larger than life pink bunny, who she has named Bun Bun.

And now, The First Noel, on a pink electric guitar, in April, during a pandemic.

I sat a little longer and listened to the end of the song. I hummed along. Then Olivia went into a song I only know as the Baby Bumblebee song: “I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee! Won’t my mommy be so proud of me…”

And I laughed.

As she continued, playing a full concert of songs, most of which I didn’t recognize, I went on upstairs. It was my writing time, and so I worked on my new book, accompanied by the sound of my daughter’s musical talent. Her sense of humor. Her brilliance, which has lit up my day so many times before.

My shoulders relaxed. And for that time, there was no pandemic. There was no quarantine. There were no masks, no daily death count, no politicizing at the expense of people’s lives. There was just normal. Just the familiar.

My daughter reached for the familiar, and a familiar she wouldn’t have, if she wasn’t at home because of COVID-19.

And I reached for a familiar too, a familiar I wouldn’t have, if she wasn’t at home because of COVID-19.

Even if it was The First Noel on a pink electric guitar in April. During a pandemic.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Like many, if not most, people, I’ve had some problems dealing with this whole pandemic thing. There is the frustration of limited movement, limited resources, limited interactions. But ultimately, there’s the fear. Will I get it? Will my family get it? And for me, there’s an addition: How will this affect my small business, AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop. The fear also centers around my having at least four of the “risk factors”: I’m soon to be sixty, I have asthma, I’m in treatment for breast cancer, and I have high blood pressure. I feel like a walking target, if the COVID bugs zoom anywhere near me.

All of this began manifesting itself in insomnia, in feelings of panic, and ultimately, sleepwalking, which I haven’t done in years. This morning, I woke up as I was attempting to pull back the covers and climb out of bed to go who knows where. I was only thwarted by my cat, who was laying on top of my covers and making it difficult to get out. The struggle woke me. I guess I should thank her.

But I am getting some stress relief now, and it came in the strangest way. When I first mentioned the sleepwalking on Facebook, my son Andy’s friend, Rayne, who has been a part of our lives since they were in high school together, and who I consider a part of my family, messaged me and said I needed to start playing Animal Crossing, a video game. Andy, an avid gamer, took up the call.

So you have to understand – Animal Crossing is the only video game that has ever seduced me. A game called Harvest Moon came close to having the same impact, but Animal Crossing is IT in my book. Years ago, I bought myself my own Nintendo Game Cube system to just play that game. I bought myself a Nintendo Gameboy DS to play that game. And now…well, there is a new Animal Crossing out. For the Nintendo Switch, a system I don’t have and never wanted. I drooled, but said, “No. I’m not going to pay for a new system now, when I don’t know how my business is going to fare with COVID-19.”

Later that same day, I was going through an old photo album of my mother’s. My mom passed several years ago, and my brother has been going through her extensive photo albums, dating back to when she met and married my father. My brother went through them and took what he wanted, and right before the virus got serious, I went to his house, collected the albums, and started to go through them on my own. I found an article that I’d written for Wisconsin Magazine, a part of the Milwaukee Journal’s Sunday edition years ago. This article was published in June of 1992. It was about my decision to allow my kids to have the original Nintendo game system. And about how my then-husband and I decided to limit their playing time, at first to keep them from overdoing it…but after awhile, it became so we would have time ourselves to play!  There’s a picture of us in front of the system, and smack dab in the front is my son, Andy. And this boy, at six years old, is quoted as saying, “I think kids only get to play Nintendo for an hour, but big people get to play all they want.”

Smart, smart kid. He was right.

So now, when I said no, he took matters into his own hands for his mother. He had to search to find one, but he did, and he bought me a Nintendo Switch. When it arrived, he set it up.

And suddenly, there I was. In charge of my own desert island. I’ve already gone from a tent to my first house, which is decorated sparsely, but it’s getting there. I have a pet seahorse and a pet hermit crab. I go fishing, I catch things in nets, I shake trees for treasure and sometimes get stung by bees. I helped establish the island’s museum. I talk to other island folks, a set of three raccoons who run the store and who gave me my mortgage on my house, and also a purple kangaroo who says “Boing!” a lot, and the world’s ugliest squirrel who likes to work out. This afternoon, I traveled to a mysterious island, where I invited a sheep named Vesta to be my  neighbor. She said she will.

I know. The whole thing sounds nonsensical. And you know what? It is. When I sink into this game, I’m not trapped in my house, but I’m on an island where I can control certain things (not getting stung by bees, apparently). The creatures are happy. I’m not worried. I even planted a money tree. It’s different even from writing fiction, because when I do that, there is always the undertow of concern: Am I writing well? Will readers like this? Is this the best I can do? Playing Animal Crossing, who cares? It only matters to me.

And my stress level? Way, way, way down.

Smart, smart kid, this Andy. And Rayne too. I love them both.

And yes, that helps. Despite Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Well, like pretty much the rest of the world, my family and I went into lockdown this week. On Monday, our governor announced that he was putting in a “Shelter In Place” order, on Tuesday, it became official, and on Wednesday, it went into action. So here we are.

As a family, our habit has been to go out to dinner on Saturday nights, and often, we also go to a movie. I’ve loved going to the movies for pretty much as long as I can remember. The big screen, the brightness, the sound…all of it is larger than life and I soak it in. The theater we tend to go to recently added really nice seats that recline with the push of a button. Every now and then, they run a special with older movies and I delight in bringing my 7-year old granddaughter to them. The last movie we saw together was the original Sleeping Beauty. She was mesmerized, even without all the bells and whistles of current animation. Partway through the movie, I leaned over and whispered, “Do you know how old Grandma was when this movie came out?” She shook her head, her eyes glued to the screen. “I wasn’t even born yet!” I said, and then she did turn to me, her already large brown eyes even larger, widened in amazement that what she was watching was even older than her grandmother!

The first movie I remember seeing in a theater was Disney’s One Hundred And One Dalmatians. I remember sitting in my seat and looking up at that screen and being as agog as my granddaughter. I remember gasping, laughing, crying, putting my hands over my eyes to block the scary parts. But the weird thing is the movie came out in 1961, when I was a year old. I know this took place in Minnesota, where I lived from 1966 – 1972. I remember being little, my legs not hanging over the edge of my seat. But I wasn’t one. It must have been a revival of some sort, a showing of an older movie. All I know for sure is that I loved it, and when I was old enough to date, the best date anyone could take me on was to the movies. The boys I went with knew that the movies weren’t an excuse for a make-out session. My hand could be held or an arm could be draped around my shoulders, but let me focus on that screen. It’s still that way today.

Which is why I felt sad that we were locked down before I had a chance to see The Call Of The Wild or The Assistant, both on my to-see list. We locked down before I could bring my granddaughter to see Onward, which I’d been planning on since I saw its first trailer.

One of the things I’ve learned from this lockdown is that our lives aren’t completely online. We still treasure many places and experiences that occur off the worldwide web. I miss the movies. My gym. Going out to eat. My students.

But last Saturday night, we ordered pizza and wings and had them delivered. Then we sat down to watch a DVD. Yes, a DVD – not a movie on Netflix or Hulu or any of the other streaming services. Michael and I have been hooked on watching the series This Is Us on Hulu, and one of the actors is Mandy Moore. This brought us to remember the movie Saved, with Mandy Moore, Macauley Culkin, and Jena Malone. Michael and I saw the movie together in the theater in 2004 and were so taken with it, we bought the DVD. So we dug it out, dusted off the DVD player, called Olivia out of her room, and we watched.

And here’s the thing. In a theater, I typically sit with Michael on one side of me and Livvy on the other. We eat popcorn and slurp soda and push the buttons on our recliners to get comfortable. But while we might whisper a comment or two to each other during the movie, we’re silent, out of respect for the other theater-goers.

But at home?

We talked.

We talked before the movie, introducing Olivia to what it was about. We talked during the movie, pausing it if we had an extensive conversation. And we talked afterwards, without the disruption of pulling on jackets, grabbing purses, walking to the car, paying attention to the road.

We talked.

It was just the nicest evening.

Now when (note I didn’t say if) life goes back to normal, will I be back in the theater? Oh, yes. Partly for myself, because I love the cinema. But partly for the theaters themselves, because they’re going to be hurting very soon. Someone told me that this is likely the final nail in the coffin for theaters, who have been struggling to compete with streaming systems. I’m going to try to pull out that last nail. I may be almost sixty, but there’s a part of me still that sits agog in front of that large screen, watching black and white dogs do amazing things, and that part of me wants to glance over and see my granddaughter, the reflections of the film playing over her face.

But will I remember this evening of watching a movie I love, watching my daughter watch it, talking to her about it in real time and not waiting for the two hours to go by? Oh, yes. I think we’ll be exploring more of the DVDs we have hidden away in our coffee table.

In the middle of this chaos, it was just the nicest evening.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Well, holy cow, this is a challenge. Writing a moment of happiness when our entire world has been turned upside down. Kids at home, people staying home from work, closings here, there and everywhere.

So sure. A moment of happiness. Hmmm.

I admit that I’ve spent a large amount of time this week thinking about how awful this all is. Perseverating. Obsessing. Checking the news several times during the day. Watching the numbers. Taking my temperature. Taking Michael’s and Olivia’s temperatures. Coughing and wondering why I was coughing. Sneezing and wondering why I was sneezing. Worrying about family that have customer service jobs and are still out there, working in grocery stores and retail stores, surrounded by panicked people. Who might be coughing and sneezing. And, selfishly, worrying about myself. I’m in the “high risk” category. I have hypertension and asthma.

I told someone I felt a bit like that old carnival game, the shooting galleries, where a row of metal cut-outs streams across a booth and you use a pellet gun or something to shoot at them. I felt like one of those cut-outs, just waiting to be shot.

Well, anyway, it’s not been a great week. I don’t imagine it’s been a great week for anyone, really.

But I found myself in conversation with a student this morning. She’s a coaching client, and she’s local, so typically when we meet, we’re sitting across from each other at my classroom table. I have a lot of fun with this particular client – she’s writing a whacky and wonderful book and she’s whacky and wonderful. We laugh a lot. But this morning, I was looking at her on my computer screen as we Skyped. And she was looking back at me.

We talked some about all the things we can’t do right now, and for an undetermined amount of time. Go to a restaurant. Go to the movies. Go anywhere, locally or otherwise. In Wisconsin, it’s still cold – I just received a weather alert that it’s about to snow. Going out to take a walk is a challenge, and for me, until the weather gets into the upper 40’s, it’s an impossibility. Breathing cold air throws me into an asthma attack. As we talked, I could feel us both deflating, this wonderful whacky student and me. Which was so wrong. We don’t deflate. We laugh.

And then I mentioned that we would still be getting our Thursday Sundaes tonight. Culvers, like many restaurants, is closed for dine-in, but they’re still open for drive-thru. And I saw my student light up. “Sundaes!” she said. “We can still get sundaes!”

I get the feeling I’m not going to be the only one sitting in the drive-thru tonight, ordering frozen custard.

Warming up to my subject, I told my student how, for over a year, I felt bad about having Oral Allergy Syndrome and focused only on the things I could no longer eat. Fresh fruit. Fresh vegetables. Nuts. Seeds. And as a result, I ate horribly unhealthy stuff. But then I began to turn it around. “I started to focus on what I CAN eat,” I said. “Cooked fruits. Cooked vegetables.” With that, everything changed. I began to eat better. I joined a gym (which I now can’t go to, but more on that in a sec). Since January 4th, I’ve lost 18 pounds. It’s slow, but that’s okay.

“Maybe,” I said, “that’s the case here too. Maybe we need to focus on what we can do, instead of what we can’t.” And we began to list them.

Order take-out or delivery (and help restaurants which are struggling now).

Go for a walk (when it’s warm). Visit state parks. Stand and marvel at Lake Michigan.

Watch television shows you used to love, and television shows you’ve never seen before on streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.

Talk to family on Skype.

Pore over old photo albums.

Read. Write.

Order a set of free weights and a little stair-stepper to work out at home. (There’s my missing gym.) Shriek with delight when your gym offers a daily Facebook Live free 20-minute workout.

“Go get sundaes!” my wonderful whacky student cheered.

Go get sundaes.

And as much as we can, look at each other on Skype or FaceTime or Facebook Messenger, or hear each other on the phone (call, don’t text), or stand six feet away from each other and say, over and over, “It’s going to be fine. We’re okay.”

Somebody said that to me this week, in my only face-to-face no-screen-between interaction outside of Michael and Olivia and my son Andy. This person sat across from me and said, “You’re going to be fine.” And I said, “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”

So let’s keep saying it.

Because that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Well, this is a challenge. Trying to find a moment of happiness to write about during a pandemic, and among so much chaos and panic. But you know what? Look around and you’ll find it. Look close.

My daughter Olivia has been thinking about dying her hair for some time. First, she wanted pink. Then purple. Then teal. Then navy blue. The issue is that Olivia’s natural hair is very, very dark, like her father’s, and to achieve those vibrant colors, the hair has to be bleached.

One day, she was in the salon chair, getting a haircut, and I was waiting for her. A young woman came in, her hair just looking…wrecked. There’s no other word for it. It looked like it was electrocuted and frazzled and left to die. I saw Olivia eyeing her as she explained to the hair stylist that her sister tried to bleach her hair so that it would take color.

The end result: buzz cut. So the hair could grow back.

I don’t think anyone in the salon looked anything but horrified. Olivia decided pink or purple or teal or navy blue hair was not worth possibly looking like that.

She bought a dye from a teenage-type store that was supposed to be for dark hair. It was supposed to be purple. And it was – but only on her scalp.

Then she looked at the hair dyes sold in grocery stores and drug stores. She found one that was red. MY color red. And it was for dark hair. She decided to try it, but before she bought it, she texted me. “Mama,” she said, “would you mind if we had the same hair color?”

It made me laugh. Why would I mind? It kinda made me happy. She said, “Well, I just wanted to make sure.”

I helped her dye it this weekend. And it looks amazing.

That night, I was out shopping for some new jeans. Believe it or not, my dog ate mine. While poking around, I found a sweatshirt on clearance. It had rainbow bands around the upper arms, and in capital rainbow letters across the chest, it said, SERIOUSLY?

This is one of Olivia’s most-repeated phrases. And she loves rainbow-anything. So I plucked it off the rack. Then I turned around and on another rack, a rack with my current size, there was another one. Same color, Same rainbows. Same SERIOUSLY?

My oft-repeated phrase isn’t “Seriously?” It’s “Really?” But still. I liked it. Then I looked at hers, already draped over my arm. And I looked at what could be mine, still on the rack.

Mama, would you mind if we had the same hair color?

Would she mind if we had the same shirt?

I remembered back to being nineteen. I would never, ever, EVER have wanted to wear the same clothes as my mother. I didn’t want to wear the clothes my mother wanted me to wear. One of the first things I did when I arrived at the University of Wisconsin – Madison for my freshman year was to hop a bus to East Towne Mall, run into The Gap and buy a pair of Levis. I was never allowed to wear Levis before. I wasn’t allowed much in the way of jeans. My mother was a firm believer in polyester.

Oh, those Levis. I gasped at the price. But I’d been working hard as a kennelworker at the Waukesha Humane Society for two years and I’d socked away every single cent I made for college. I bought the jeans. And I wore them until they were nothing but denim raggedy strands. And then I bought more.

But this shirt. Would Olivia mind?

I bought it and brought both home, along with my new jeans, two sizes down, thank you very much. I showed Olivia hers first. “Oh!” she said. “I love it! It’s perfect!”

Then I pulled out mine. “I bought the same one for me,” I said. “I like it too. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll always let you know when I’m going to wear it, so we don’t –“

“OH!” she said, and clapped. “Seriously? Maybe we can twin!”

Ohmygod.

Before my newly red-headed daughter drove back to college that night, she said to me, “So what day should we each wear the shirt? Thursday, when I come home? Friday?”

It’s on the calendar. Friday.

I think we all look for signs that we’ve been good parents. Some look at their kids’ accomplishments. Some look at grades, at scholarships, at job choices. Some look at how often those kids visit or call or email.

I’ve been looking at that shirt all week and dreaming of Friday.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

You would think, since I’m a writer, that I wouldn’t be amazed at the power of a single word. Words should be my everyday, my cup of coffee in the morning, my latte in the afternoon. Really good, but familiar. Yet one word can wallop us upside the head sometimes. And for me recently, that word was HOME.

Olivia’s been off to college now since last August. We see her often – she comes home every other weekend to work, and even on the weekends she doesn’t work, she tends to come home to see the boyfriend. Not us, donchaknow. But the boyfriend. I talk to her every day via Facebook Messenger or text.

But it’s still been a difficult transition. She’s my fourth child, and the last to leave. My oldest daughter lives in Louisiana now. My two sons are still in Waukesha, but lead busy lives and so they aren’t cups of coffee anymore. And now Olivia. Olivia is the cup of coffee that has rattled my world for nineteen years. Almost twenty, if you consider the time she spent in utero, my 40-year old body stunned by her sudden presence. And now, her presence is usually elsewhere.

I’ve adapted. When she returns to school, I straighten her room, smooth her bedspread, close her dresser drawers, tuck in her desk chair. When night falls, I turn on the reading lamp in the corner. When I go to bed, I turn it off. I’ve had to learn to sit on my hands when she’s had difficulty, watching as she deals with it herself, because to the legal world, she is an adult. There’s a show on Netflix called Atypical, featuring a young man on the autism spectrum. When he goes to college, his mother says to another mother, “It’s like I’ve become illegal.” I feel every bit as illegal as she does. I didn’t feel that with the other three…but with this child, I do.

Still, life has settled into a kid-in-college routine. But then something started happening. She began to refer to school and her dorm room as home.

Home.

I Googled the definition of the word. It said, “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” Interestingly, the example they gave was, “I was nineteen when I left home and went to college.”

Home is where we fought battles to establish communication with a child who was predicted to be nonverbal. Olivia began to memorize scripts from television shows and she’d throw lines at us in desperation, trying to express what she wanted, and we just didn’t understand, though we tried. Oh, the temper tantrums. Home is where we dreamed for our daughter, and when she suddenly began to speak, and to speak in complex, complete sentences with the vocabulary of an adult, she began to dream with us. Home is where we said, “You can!” and she said, “I will!” Home is where I held her when she went through her first boyfriend break-up, dealt with best friends who turned into bullies, when she learned that she is autistic and she lived in fear that she would wake up one day and find herself at the bottom of the spectrum. Home is where we have cheered and applauded everything, from potty-training to learning how to chew to tolerating the feel of denim against her skin to being a 4.0 student to expressing herself with music and writing and art.

This is home. Her father is home. I am home.

She began sending me messages, saying, “I’ll do it later, when I’m home,” or “I’ll text you when I get home from classes.” I gritted my teeth, but I handled it. I’m illegal now, after all. But then last weekend, she was home, here, and I reminded her of something that she needed to bring back with her, and she said, “Oh, you’re right, I should bring that home with me.”

Her voice, saying that, was what got to me, I think. Not black texted words on a screen. But her voice.

She was in her room. I was in the hallway, walking away to return to my office to get some work done. I spun on my heels. “This is home!” I cried. “This is home!”

“What?” she called from her room.

“This is home! That’s school!”

“Oh, Mama!” She ran from her room, down the hall, and wrapped me in a hug.

Olivia’s done this thing, when she hugs me, since she was in elementary school and tiny. She stands on her toes, trying to make herself taller. At one point, she would stand on her toes and smack her hard skull into my chin, and so I learned to tilt my head away. Then her toes made her as tall as I am. Then she was as tall as I am and her toes made her taller. Now she starts out taller, and her toes make her taller still. I’ve had to grow used to no longer being able to rest my cheek against the top of any of my children’s heads. I now rest my head on Olivia’s shoulder.

When Olivia raises up on her toes, it’s tradition for me to say, as all one word, “Getoffayourtoes!” And she giggles while I attempt to yank her flat-footed. It’s pretty near impossible now.

So she hugged me. “Oh, Mama,” she said. And then those toes raised her up.

“Getoffayourtoes!” I said. “And this is home. THIS is.”

And she giggled.

There was that sound. Olivia’s giggling was one of the first indicators we had that we could communicate. We would laugh and Olivia would laugh with us, looking directly into our faces, and we’d rock together in hilarity. Or she would laugh at something and we’d join in and there we were again. Connection. If we could connect, we could communicate. And if we could communicate, she would succeed. We did. She has.

She giggled. And then she lowered herself down flat-footed. “Okay, Mama,” she said, and went back to her room. And I relaxed.

But damned if she didn’t message me on Facebook, “I’m home!” when she got back to the dorm on Sunday night. And then she sent me a laughing emoji.

I could hear the giggle from here.

Home.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.