Cancel 2020
Some days, you take heart in small problems. This morning I came downstairs to find Joe scurrying around, getting ready for work. As I headed to the bathroom, he stopped me. "The chain on the toilet flusher is broken" he said before heading off to the junk drawer to see if he could find something to rig it with. I lifted the top off the back of the toilet and found that the chain had rusted right through: one part of it still connected to the tank lever and the other down in the cool, clean water. I reached in, pulled the chain up which pulled up the flap-- voila! No worries.
"I can't find another chain. Can you use a paperclip or something to put it together?" He must have thought the link connecting the chain to the lever had broken. No such luck. I told him that the entire chain needed replacing. He'll stop on his way home, and frankly, I'm grateful for this. A small problem with an easy fix, what I often call "small potatoes". Right about now, it's almost a gift, if you think about it. The experience of being able to manage a minor inconvenience and successfully correct it is wonderful.
This year has been full of problem potatoes of a larger variety. There was the furnace being condemned and not having heat (aside from space heaters) for a month. There was the re-injury of my stupid foot and ankle, which took several weeks to get back to speed and forced us to cancel a trip to vacation cabin on the Coast as it had a lot of stairs. Covid-19 came along, shortening Joe's trip to Florida with his folks once he heard that a coworker had come down with acute symptoms. Our "make-up for the cancelled January trip" to the Coast was also cancelled. Our plan to go to Honolulu in November, cancelled. Which makes me wonder, now, can we just cancel 2020? Maybe even 2021?
Cancelled: J's Boy Scout Troop's summer camp. The Pacific Northwest Council rightly closed their campsites in order to protect campers. J's troop leader is trying to organize some kind of camping trip still (?!?!), but that was an easy "no" on sending him. Which means that my week of relief from parenting is also cancelled, but so it goes. When this Coronavirus thing first hit, people kept saying "it's not affecting children". Joe said that to me back then and I replied "We know absolutely nothing about this virus, it's still new. We don't know if the kids who are asymptomatic won't have some kind of residual damage or alteration to the body." Unfortunately, it's a sad coincidence that now we are seeing many documented cases of asymptomatic kids coming down with horrible inflammations, young previously healthy children having heart attacks and blood disorders.
Cancelled: My patience for anyone who wants to argue that wearing a mask is an infringement on their liberty or useless. You are just being obtuse, folks. Covid-19 is the infringement on your liberty, and anyone who is going to tell me to 'go educate' myself all the while looking for articles which give them confirmation bias-- they can fuck right off at this point. Friends don't ask friends to play chicken with a deadly virus, and the people who are being told that this is a hoax or that it's not as bad as it seems or that their 'liberties' are in jeopardy if they follow stay at home orders might consider this-- does a friend expect you to show your allegiance by willfully exposing yourself to this disease? The organizations pushing this small, radical-conservative 'we're victims of the state' movement ARE the exact organizations who have been calling a lot of the shots all along. Don't like the status quo? Guess what? They ARE the status quo.
Cancelled: Any feelings of guilt for sitting out social gatherings for the much-foreseeable future. Even if everyone else feels it's going to be 'fine', hey, you do you. We will happily see you via Zoom or in another appropriate socially-distant situation. Anything which requires me to use a bathroom that's not my own? Hard pass.
We are lucky-- we CAN quarantine and isolate, we can wear a mask-- we do things things for those who can't. Not to virtue signal; there is no fucking glory in not getting someone sick. I have a list as long as my arm of things I'm really missing, especially sushi and going out for a drink with my friends, but we're only doing take-out hot food to ensure we don't run a higher risk of infection. I miss being able to stroll into the Nursery and not having to wait in lines. I miss going to Movie Madness to rent an old movie. I miss walking with J to Seven Virtues to get him a croissant and myself a soy latte. We don't go into coffee shops any more. There's no reason to when I can make coffee and cookies at home. I miss getting my haircut and listening to the my thirty-something fellow talk about his life, his studying to become an engineer, and his motorcycle adventures. I'm sure he is missing those things as well.
I am missing a lot, and most of it is small potatoes in the big picture. Joe has an underlying lung issue, chronic bronchitis which he contracted back in the 80s during his time in the Army. Our healthy son, we now know, is no more immune to any permanent damage than anyone else. Me? I'm not expendable either. We will see our way through this, we are privileged and fortunate and ALL the good things to be in the position in life where we have options. I still hate the fact that Joe has to go in to the office each day. I hate the fact that he hasn't had a workday off in a couple months, that his work is even more demanding than it was a few months ago, that my husband has to run the gauntlet of mentally ill, sometimes angry, sometimes violent people who camp near his office. (One of his employees was attacked by a guy with a knife because he didn't give him a cigarette. Shit's getting worse downtown.) I worry that some fool will try to hurt him on his travels between the parking garage and the Big Pink tower he works in, where the windows don't open. I hate all of that, but we're doing the best we can.
After breakfast this morning, I put on Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, braised some chicken for dinner, roasted vegetables and decided that I'm done. I'm cancelling it all, opting out of the arguments. I'm done trying to convince people to do the right thing. I'm done trying to explain to those who say "it'll be better soon" that their beliefs are not grounded in reality and that soon is not in the near future. I'm done trying to help people understand why we don't have to continue to risk lives to prop up an already inequitable economy. Business will not save us in its current form. Love and charity might be a start, but as long as we have a slim margin willing to risk it all in order to prove a point, to try to bully lawmakers into doing their will, things are going to be worse than they need to for a long time to come. Those are the big potatoes--selfishness, self-centeredness, a self-inflated sense of rightness-- that are going to do us in. It's our compassion, our caution, our smarts and selflessness which are going to help lead us out of this time, and this time is going to be a long time. Longer than most of us are prepared to acknowledge. So, let's cancel our ideas of what 'should be' and move toward accepting what is. It will make things better for us all.
"I can't find another chain. Can you use a paperclip or something to put it together?" He must have thought the link connecting the chain to the lever had broken. No such luck. I told him that the entire chain needed replacing. He'll stop on his way home, and frankly, I'm grateful for this. A small problem with an easy fix, what I often call "small potatoes". Right about now, it's almost a gift, if you think about it. The experience of being able to manage a minor inconvenience and successfully correct it is wonderful.
This year has been full of problem potatoes of a larger variety. There was the furnace being condemned and not having heat (aside from space heaters) for a month. There was the re-injury of my stupid foot and ankle, which took several weeks to get back to speed and forced us to cancel a trip to vacation cabin on the Coast as it had a lot of stairs. Covid-19 came along, shortening Joe's trip to Florida with his folks once he heard that a coworker had come down with acute symptoms. Our "make-up for the cancelled January trip" to the Coast was also cancelled. Our plan to go to Honolulu in November, cancelled. Which makes me wonder, now, can we just cancel 2020? Maybe even 2021?
Cancelled: J's Boy Scout Troop's summer camp. The Pacific Northwest Council rightly closed their campsites in order to protect campers. J's troop leader is trying to organize some kind of camping trip still (?!?!), but that was an easy "no" on sending him. Which means that my week of relief from parenting is also cancelled, but so it goes. When this Coronavirus thing first hit, people kept saying "it's not affecting children". Joe said that to me back then and I replied "We know absolutely nothing about this virus, it's still new. We don't know if the kids who are asymptomatic won't have some kind of residual damage or alteration to the body." Unfortunately, it's a sad coincidence that now we are seeing many documented cases of asymptomatic kids coming down with horrible inflammations, young previously healthy children having heart attacks and blood disorders.
Cancelled: My patience for anyone who wants to argue that wearing a mask is an infringement on their liberty or useless. You are just being obtuse, folks. Covid-19 is the infringement on your liberty, and anyone who is going to tell me to 'go educate' myself all the while looking for articles which give them confirmation bias-- they can fuck right off at this point. Friends don't ask friends to play chicken with a deadly virus, and the people who are being told that this is a hoax or that it's not as bad as it seems or that their 'liberties' are in jeopardy if they follow stay at home orders might consider this-- does a friend expect you to show your allegiance by willfully exposing yourself to this disease? The organizations pushing this small, radical-conservative 'we're victims of the state' movement ARE the exact organizations who have been calling a lot of the shots all along. Don't like the status quo? Guess what? They ARE the status quo.
Cancelled: Any feelings of guilt for sitting out social gatherings for the much-foreseeable future. Even if everyone else feels it's going to be 'fine', hey, you do you. We will happily see you via Zoom or in another appropriate socially-distant situation. Anything which requires me to use a bathroom that's not my own? Hard pass.
We are lucky-- we CAN quarantine and isolate, we can wear a mask-- we do things things for those who can't. Not to virtue signal; there is no fucking glory in not getting someone sick. I have a list as long as my arm of things I'm really missing, especially sushi and going out for a drink with my friends, but we're only doing take-out hot food to ensure we don't run a higher risk of infection. I miss being able to stroll into the Nursery and not having to wait in lines. I miss going to Movie Madness to rent an old movie. I miss walking with J to Seven Virtues to get him a croissant and myself a soy latte. We don't go into coffee shops any more. There's no reason to when I can make coffee and cookies at home. I miss getting my haircut and listening to the my thirty-something fellow talk about his life, his studying to become an engineer, and his motorcycle adventures. I'm sure he is missing those things as well.
I am missing a lot, and most of it is small potatoes in the big picture. Joe has an underlying lung issue, chronic bronchitis which he contracted back in the 80s during his time in the Army. Our healthy son, we now know, is no more immune to any permanent damage than anyone else. Me? I'm not expendable either. We will see our way through this, we are privileged and fortunate and ALL the good things to be in the position in life where we have options. I still hate the fact that Joe has to go in to the office each day. I hate the fact that he hasn't had a workday off in a couple months, that his work is even more demanding than it was a few months ago, that my husband has to run the gauntlet of mentally ill, sometimes angry, sometimes violent people who camp near his office. (One of his employees was attacked by a guy with a knife because he didn't give him a cigarette. Shit's getting worse downtown.) I worry that some fool will try to hurt him on his travels between the parking garage and the Big Pink tower he works in, where the windows don't open. I hate all of that, but we're doing the best we can.
After breakfast this morning, I put on Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, braised some chicken for dinner, roasted vegetables and decided that I'm done. I'm cancelling it all, opting out of the arguments. I'm done trying to convince people to do the right thing. I'm done trying to explain to those who say "it'll be better soon" that their beliefs are not grounded in reality and that soon is not in the near future. I'm done trying to help people understand why we don't have to continue to risk lives to prop up an already inequitable economy. Business will not save us in its current form. Love and charity might be a start, but as long as we have a slim margin willing to risk it all in order to prove a point, to try to bully lawmakers into doing their will, things are going to be worse than they need to for a long time to come. Those are the big potatoes--selfishness, self-centeredness, a self-inflated sense of rightness-- that are going to do us in. It's our compassion, our caution, our smarts and selflessness which are going to help lead us out of this time, and this time is going to be a long time. Longer than most of us are prepared to acknowledge. So, let's cancel our ideas of what 'should be' and move toward accepting what is. It will make things better for us all.
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