Day #348 Writing Through COVID-19: Communion and Monopoly

This morning as I logged my dad onto Zoom for his Sunday School class, he said, "Did you remember today is Ade's birthday?"

"Yes!" I said. What I didn't say was I was surprised he had remembered too.

Happy Birthday, dear Adrienne!

I'm still distancing as much as possible, so Dan went to church alone again this morning. He said it was "full," meaning that most of the un-blocked-off rows had at least someone in them. The service is now a full 15 minutes shorter than pre-COVID. A drop-box has replaced the passing of the offering plates, and communion is now a simultaneous opening of individual wafer-and-wine packets. Both of these adaptations save time!

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This evening my kids and I played Monopoly on a phone app. Harrison's girlfriend Maria introduced us to the digital version of the game. We open a Zoom room while playing, so our chatter and facial expressions complete the money-grubbing tight-fisted capitalistic-greed experience. Those of us striving to drive our opponents into bankruptcy tonight hailed from Florida, Des Moines, Atlantic, Denver, and Salt Lake City, yet it felt like we were all wheedling and conniving in the same room!
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As we ease out of COVID's grip over the coming months, I wonder which aspects of our pandemic-inspired adaptions we'll retain. 

The ritualistic aspects of a church service, such as the repeated murmur of communion (Body of Christ, broken for you; Blood of Christ shed for you) had a hypnotizing, calming rhythm that I doubt will be permanently replaced by the quick crinkle of COVID Lunchable-style communion packets. 

But Monopoly across time zones? That's a keeper.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

Day #347 Writing Through COVID-19: Countdown

The one-year mark feels like the right time to wrap up this chapter of blogging.

I have 19 days to go.

My COVID blogging project has given me purpose during a time that has otherwise often felt like treading water. 

We all put classes, weddings, concerts, travel, holidays, and funerals on hold, while elevating the ordinary motions of shopping and dental appointments to stressful, planning-heavy challenges. 

Yet because I was blogging, I was able to coat the day's difficulties (and ennui) with a dusting of opportunity: Yes, it wasn't good; but I could write about it.
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Now, on the cusp of March 2021, I'm tired of seeing Day #---- Writing Through COVID-19: at the head of every post.

I'm ready to move on.
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My Writing-Through-Covid project re-taught me the regimen of daily writing. When I returned to teaching 17 years ago, my writing dropped off precipitously. I excused myself by claiming that lesson-design drained my creative energy. 

It's true, planning lessons is composition, and it does demand creative energy. But this project reminded me that creativity is not a finite commodity. Using it does not consume some limited allotment. It can, in fact, feed itself.

Furthermore, this project gave me permission to explore small moments of joy while blowing bubbles and of frustration when confronted by maskless Covid-deniers in public spaces
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Writing invites me (and you) to experience life twice: first by living it, then by making sense of it in words. I can understand that people may wish they hadn't had to endure 2020 once, let alone twice. But for me, coming to the page to reflect and talk about my day has given me permission to distill 24 hours of uncertainty into 600 words of...words. That's something.

Thank you for keeping me company during this uncertain, terrifying, boring, frustrating, liberating, paralyzing time. In these next three weeks, I'll keep my focus on the virus. 

But come March 18, 2021, I'll say 

Enough.

Be well.
Write.

Allison

William Wolf Hoegh, 7 1/2 months

 

Day #344 Writing Through COVID-19: Say Something Nice.

Today in Yearbook class K said she hopes she's as fit as I am when she's my age. It was such a lovely compliment (especially considering a student called me "Grandma" earlier this week). I told her that I, too, have admired "old people" for a range of reasons and thought "I want to be like that when I'm that age."
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As compliments are wont to do, K's words made me determined to live up to her perception of me today.

I attended Game Club after school. While I usually gravitate to chess, a decidedly sedentary choice. But some kids were playing "Let's Dance" on the Wii, so I got in line and gave it a go. I came in third out of four. Let's log that as a win.

Next, I headed to cycling class at the YMCA for the third time this week. Our fearless leader Emma built the workout around chronologically arranged Taylor Swift songs. Emma even wore the French braid. We rocked it out and biked it hard!

When I got home, Dan was in the basement finishing his old-man evening lifting/biking regimen. He agreed to a game of Ping-Pong, and I beat him 21-17.
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K is a compliment-generous person, as am I. I get a buzz from inviting people to glimpse their potential or see themselves through the eyes of someone (me) who appreciates their gifts. 

Has anyone researched the idea that bestowing compliments on others might, in fact, be a key to happiness?

Asking for a friend.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

Just a sleeping angel. 

Day #343 Writing Through COVID-19: Happiness

For the past 343 days, I've trained my eye on the pandemic, determined to chronicle whatever COVID-19 brought my way.

During the first months, the shift to masking, distancing, protecting loved ones, and adjusting even the smallest of life's routines provided a deep pool for reflection each night.

Add to that the unexpected re-homing of my aging parents in my basement, then the birth of a first grandbaby I have yet to see.  

When school resumed and COVID peaked in Iowa, the pandemic glowed like a hot coal in the center of my days. 

We muddled our way through distanced holidays, then reeled from the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. Tensions across the world are stretched to the breaking point. The promise of a vaccine hovers on the horizon: surely when the pandemic subsides, the bludgeoning disappointments and anger that have defined the past year will also abate. Or so it's tempting to believe.
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One of my students is writing her research paper on happiness. While helping her with finding sources, I came upon an article on how bad we are at predicting what will make us happy. We think aging will make us less happy, it said, yet the opposite is true. We mistakenly hold out weight-loss or job promotions or new relationships as keys to happiness.

This got me thinking. Am I romanticizing the fantasy of my post-pandemic life, unrealistically believing the "if it weren't for COVID" fallacy? I do not want to neglect opportunities for joy in the present by choosing instead to push all of my hope for happiness into a future space.
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You'd think a cancer diagnosis at 45 would shake a person into a habit of living in the NOW, whatever that is, even a COVID now.

And you'd be right. It did. For awhile.

But embracing the now, the here, the today is an ongoing effort. I'm glad my student's research project brought this back into my viewfinder.
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Here and now:

• Cycling for a second day with Emma gave me an endorphin rush that (for a few hours) convinced me I was superwoman.
• My yearbook staff engaged in a thoughtful discussion about (surprise?) happiness today. A poster in the hall proclaimed: Choose Happy! K wondered aloud if we can, in fact, control happiness. She said she sometimes just feels sad and cries. G talked about introversion. H said her "happiness" is sometimes totally fake. M suggested that we CAN choose positivity, and that might, in turn, increase the possibility of happiness, but we can't beat ourselves up when we're not feeling happy. (Yes, this conversation happened while we were  designing the yearbook cover.)
• Tonight I spent an hour on a Zoom poetry reading organized by the Iowa Poetry Association. I was uplifted by beautiful poems flung into the world by brave and eloquent (if not all happy) writers.

Enough.
Be well.
Write a poem.

Allison

It's summer in NZ! 

Day #341 Writing Through COVID-19: Self-Care

I'm not into self-care.

That is, I don't think self-care should be one more thing we pencil into our already packed lives. If we have to set aside special time to stop beating ourselves up, if our miserable lives need to schedule a few minutes to soak our feet, we are doing something terribly wrong. 

I prefer to live in an ongoing state of self-care. Call it selfish. Call it 61-year-old wise. But if what I'm doing is causing me distress and exhaustion, I change what I'm doing. 
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Teaching in a pandemic is challenging, to be sure. I've redesigned countless lessons to keep kids masked, distanced, and connected online. But when things get hairy, I am this year tapping gently on the brakes, which I find preferable to revving my entire classroom's engines into burnout.
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Then.

Our district scheduled a Self-Care day today for all staff. Students stayed home while teachers were on contract from 8-3:30 with the directive to Care For Ourselves.

At first thought, I wanted only to stay home (which was not an option). Waking at 6 to plow through unplowed roads felt like the antithesis of Self-Care.

But as the day unfolded, my attitude shifted.
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I spent the first 20 minutes of the day having coffee with a co-worker who I knew needed to unload some recent frustrations. While education gives lip service to the value of teamwork among colleagues, the reality of our jam-packed schedules leaves only fleeting minutes to listen to each other. 

Next, I worked in my classroom before heading to the YMCA for an all-teacher yoga class, followed by an invigorating cycling workout. These were the most public activities I've engaged in since March 2020. I wore a mask and distanced myself, wiped the mats and the bike with disinfectant, used a tissue (per the posted instructions) to press the water-fountain button. 

I think I was pretty COVID safe. 
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Upon my return to school, I ate a delicious salad catered by a local restaurant, paid for by (??school funds??) not me!

Since August, I have sacrificed the colleague camaraderie of lunchtime in the teacher workroom for the hyper-vigilant COVID precaution demanded by my children.

Again today I picked up my lunch and returned to my room to eat alone. 

But I'd no sooner opened my styrofoam box when Rebecca knocked at my door. "Can I join you?"
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Rebecca is young enough to be my daughter. She teaches Family Consumer Science while I teach English. Yet we recognize in each other passions and humor. To have her join me (distanced!) for lunch was delicious self-care. 
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I squeezed in a little more school work before meeting up in Brandon's classroom to watch a film Randall worked on in 2010. Before becoming a teacher, Randall worked in film. He joined our staff three years ago, and we've said again and again that we'd like to watch one of "his" movies. 

Today--Atlantic Community School District Self-Care Day--finally allowed us time and space to do it! The film was a psychological thriller, made even more interesting as Randall explained camera shots, production decisions, and anecdotes of working with the cast.
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Today I felt productive, relaxed, strong, sated, engaged, stimulated, and appreciated. 

I didn't realize how much I needed self-care.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

Day #340 Writing Through COVID-19: Old and Precious

I was glum after the strange, short phone call I had with my dad yesterday, so this morning when I talked him through logging on to Zoom for Sunday School, I asked if he'd be up to Bridge later in the day. He said he'd like that.

This afternoon we played a hand. It was not our best, in part because we played poorly, but also because our opponent had such unusual cards: two singletons! (Call this rationalization.)
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After our game, I asked if Mom was sleeping. "I think so," he said. "She sleeps a lot unless we are reading to each other."

Just then my mom called from the bedroom: "I'm awake!"

"Come out and see Alli," Dad said. 
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I asked no direct questions and instead guided the conversation gently: "I had Adrienne bring you Klondike Bars because I remembered how much we enjoyed them in the evenings watching movies when you were at my house," I said. This phrasing invited her to chime in without putting her on the spot with direct questions such as "Did you like the Klondike Bars?" or "Remember when we watched movies in my basement?"

"Some of the movies were better than others," I offered, and my mom gamely rejoined: 

"But the Klondike Bars were always good!"
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Such exchanges--when she's interacting with humor--are puffs of joy to me. They let me feel her intelligence and joie de vivre, characteristics I rarely appreciated when we were locked in constant battle during my teen years, and then beyond. 

It now seems like such a loss, at age 61, to realize the dominant dynamic of my relationship with my mom was honed during a mere four years of adolescence. That difficult time cemented us into years of division and quasi-estrangement.

Part of this, I'm sure, is because of our genuine differences in how we interact with the world. 

But as I experienced during our COVID time together, we have deep affection that might have been tapped years earlier, had we not been chained to expectations welded during those few fraught teenage years.
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As painful as it is to think of the years we lost, it astounds me to realize that--at ages 89 and 60--in the crevices of a pandemic, my mother and I found a way back to healing.
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This afternoon Mom sat in the chair in front of the computer, which was angled awkwardly, cutting her off below the nose while scalping my dad who hovered behind her.

We talked about New Zealand and the handmade children's books she constructed. 

I told her that Palmer will call me one day to tell me how brilliant her students are, then call the next to tell me they know nothing! We shared a hearty teacher laugh. 
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My parents are, like antiques, old

and precious.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison

Day #339 Writing Through COVID-19: Bye, Dad.

My sister Adrienne in Ft. Dodge served as our parents' most constant contact during the past several years of their increasing need. When they relinquished their driver's licenses, she transported them on errands and to appointments. She joined them weekly for Trivia and shuffled them from the care center to her house to include them in her family's holiday celebrations. 

When our parents moved in with me last March, Adrienne wrote them hand-penned letters five times a week. 

Since they returned to Ft. Dodge in August, she's re-shouldered the family role of most-visible and helpful child (despite, I might add, having had hip replacement surgeries in October and again in December).
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My parents' current meal plan at Friendship Haven provides breakfast and lunch each day. They prepare their evening meal themselves, often using leftovers from their noon meal or concocting a healthy fruit salad. 

Adrienne had been the one to taxi our mom to Fareway for the past several years, helping her take advantage of the damaged produce and day-old bread. (Our mom loves a bargain.)

With our parents' mobility curtailed by COVID, Adrienne now does their shopping herself, delivering their humble order each Saturday.

Today, at my request, she included Klondike Bars as a surprise.
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My dad called a little before noon.

"Alli?"

"Hi, Dad."

"Did you send us Klondike Bars?"

"Yes! I did. Did Adrienne bring them to you?

"She did. Thank you."

I expected at least a short conversation. But I sense my dad is having a harder and harder time keeping up his end of our phone chats. He's now employing strategies our mother uses to minimize attention to her failing mental acuity.

"Bye now," he said. 

Bye, Dad.

Enough.
Be well.
Write. 

Allison

Little Prince on his new throne.