Looms and Loops

During a recent visit to our house, the lovely Madelyn Simone was intrigued with the scrapbook I created during my third grade year. It was dominated by yellowed clippings telling of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, accompanied by photos of his young widow, daughter Caroline, and son John-John, bravely saluting his father’s flag-draped casket. I also saved a wedding picture of my third grade teacher, some Buffalo Bills highlights, and a photo of my cousin Cathy twirling a fire baton at the high school football game, all of interest to the budding eight-year-old news junkie. 

 

While my days of keeping a scrapbook about current events ended with that treasured album from 1963-64, I’m still drawn to the news of the day, aided by in-the-moment reporting from around the world. News bulletins over the past few weeks have seemed nearly as relentless as the assassinations, civil rights marches, and the Viet Nam battles of my childhood. Images from the wildfires raging throughout the west coast of the U.S. are terrifying. As I write, Hurricane Sally is pouring down on some of our southern states, and meteorologists tell us that they’re running out of potential names on this year’s list, so they may have to go to their backup, the letters of the Greek alphabet. A disturbing report from a detention center in Georgia has surfaced, the skirmishes of the presidential campaign are brewing, and racial tensions are still high. And we’re consuming all this news through the haze of COVID-19-induced anxiety.

 

At eight, I wept for our handsome president, his family and our country, but I had the soothing presence of Walter Cronkite, and a child’s limited awareness of the impact of the daily news. Now, at sixty-five, the endless cycle of news keeps me on edge, and I wonder what the impact of each day’s revelations will have on the lives of my grandchildren and their peers around the world.

 

Given my long-time diet of the daily news, I’ve shuddered as current events have been called “fake news” or deemed to be a hoax. One report from the west coast fires told of a couple who had prepared to evacuate, only to be convinced by some internet source that the danger of the fire in their area was greatly exaggerated. Tragically, they lost their lives. 

 

Yet even those of us who trust the journalists and credible news sources grow weary. We look on from a distance and may utter a word of sympathy or whisper a prayer of support, but in a time of news saturation, our reaction soon becomes, “out of sight, out of mind.” Just as compassion fatigue in the time of great disaster is real, so is virus fatigue, political fatigue, and climate fatigue. 

 

Yet what I’m recognizing in myself is that I’ve got to make an effort to shake the lethargy that has been so prevalent in these days, even in terms of news overload. I had an “aha” moment as Madelyn asked one last question about my childhood scrapbook . “What’s this, Nana?” It was a thank you note from Jacqueline Kennedy. When plans for the JFK memorial library were being made, there was a nationwide fund drive. What could a child do to help? I had a loom and a package of loops, so I made potholders and sold them up and down Klinger Avenue, sending the proceeds to the presidential library. Thus the preserved thank you note.

 

Nearly one hundred and seventy years ago, Abel Helman and a small group of people left Ashland, Ohio to head west, where they formed a community they named Ashland Mills, Oregon. Just this week, the Almeda fire burned from Ashland to Medford, Oregon. Might there be a way to weave some potholders for those who have lost so much?

 

Peter, Paul and Mary sang: “Weave, weave, weave me the sunshine out of the falling rain. Weave me the hope of a new tomorrow, fill my cup again.” Might our looms and loops weave on, inviting respectful and courageous conversations, encouraging lifted voices, writing generous checks, offering respite, and sustaining a steady presence in our world. One potholder at a time. 

Unbelievable

I’ve always been a big fan of hand-me-downs, much to the dismay of the child who had to wear his sibling’s outgrown clothing. The same principle guides our family’s phone decisions, so when someone gets a new cellphone, we always check to see if the phone being replaced can be of use to another family member. That’s how I ended up with a “new-to-me” phone, same model but with lots more storage than my previous one. All it needed was a new battery.

 

Car, hearing aid, flashlight – we replace batteries all the time and get on with life. After I stood in line for my appointment to get the battery replaced in my “new” phone, imagine my surprise when the tech said, “We can’t replace this battery – this phone is ineligible for battery replacement.” Why? Some lame excuse that it had already been replaced once. Translate that to: you should upgrade and buy a newfangled phone. No thanks. I don’t have the extra cash under my mattress, nor do I have the brain capacity to deal with an upgraded phone. I just want a new battery for the one I have. Is that too much to ask?

 

While I do attempt to practice kindness when in a retail store, as I left the counter, I kept muttering, “unbelievable.” Did I really tell that tech that I write a newspaper column or did I just think those words?

 

I’ve been saying the word “unbelievable” quite a bit in the past few weeks. It escaped my lips as I read about Buffy Wicks, the California assemblyperson who was on maternity leave, but was told she couldn’t vote remotely or by proxy on a housing bill of importance to her. She had to travel with her month-old baby to the floor of the house to vote – in the midst of a pandemic. The response from the speaker’s office: “Only members at a higher risk from Covid-19 will be considered eligible for proxy voting. This bar of eligibility was always intended to be high, to ensure the protection of our legislative process.” What about the protection of your legislators – or their newborn babies? At the same time, the California senate has been making arrangements for remote voting for weeks. Unbelievable.

 

Also from California this week: a gender reveal party in El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa used a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device that torched a blaze. To date, 10,000 acres damaged. Unbelievably, it’s not even the first time this has happened. In 2017, it was 45,000 acres in Arizona, involving an arrow and a target filled with the highly explosive Tannerite. CNN reports of the 2017 incident: “It was a boy, and the party ended up costing the guilty patrons more than $8 million in restitution.” Unbelievable.

 

Then there’s the article from The Atlantic about the military and its commander-in-chief, which included words such as “sucker” and “loser” to describe American armed forces. I repeated the same phrase a number of times: “unbelievable.” Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father, was more eloquent: “Words we say are windows into our souls.” They sure are, Mr. Khan.

 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, and author of the renowned novel, “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” tells of tricks he learned from journalism to “transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible.” According to Marquez, the key is to “tell it straight, commonly done by reporters and country folks.” Should anyone else be added to that list? I’ve recently gotten about halfway through his novel, and he definitely took his own advice, creating a magic realism that is, well, unbelievable. 

 

On the NPR program, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, a favorite game is “Bluff the Listener.” The panelists paint three scenarios, and only one is true. I used to be pretty good at eliminating the imposters, but now I often have no clue, as just about anything is believable – or not. 

 

My mother used to warn me: “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” However, in 2020, if it’s too crazy to be true, all bets are off. Unbelievable!

So Tired

The delightful and determined Elizabeth Holiday, our beloved five-year-old granddaughter, has completed two weeks of kindergarten and is exhausted. When the bus lets her off, she trudges up the driveway, her backpack nearly as big as she is, still wearing the unicorn mask she carefully puts on each morning. Lizzie hasn’t regularly napped for months, but nearly every day of the new school year, she’s curled up and fallen asleep before supper. This week, she didn’t even make it home, falling asleep on the school bus. She’s loving school, but it’s wiping her out.

 

I’m right there with you, Lizzie. I seldom nap, but a level of exhaustion encircles me in these days that doesn’t seem commensurate with my daily activity, even when I’m chasing your baby brother and baby cousin. I’m loving life, but it’s wiping me out!

 

Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber explains in her August 30 prayer: “We don’t know how to feel less tired. We don’t know how to vanquish our own fears. . . We don’t know how to live through a global pandemic an anti-black violence and wildfires and hurricanes and the fact that Chadwick Boseman just died. We don’t know how to sustain the effort it takes to not completely freak out, and the effort it takes to keep from freaking out is one of the things that is making us so tired.” 

 

So what do we do? The fixer that resides in me by nature and that was nurtured through years of Salvation Army work wants to go right to the solution. Go to bed at the same time each night. Eat nutritious foods. Exercise more. Get outside every day. Don’t watch a scary movie before bedtime. Drink plenty of water. 

 

But here’s the thing. If I’m in the midst of a good book, I want to keep reading. The comfort foods of my childhood keep calling my name. I don’t have the energy to exercise. I’ve been outside this summer, but winter is just around the corner – so much for fresh air. I don’t watch scary movies. And if I drink plenty of water . . . well, those of a certain age know what that means.

 

Don’t get me wrong. These techniques are helpful practices for healthy living, and I’ve often suggested the very same prescription. But this weariness of the summer of 2020 goes beyond a daily quota of jumping jacks or avoidance of the bad dreams inspired by Freddy Krueger.

 

It’s tempting to downplay our own struggles when we compare our lot with other periods of history. We think about our immigrant ancestors, arriving penniless in the new world, or worse, bound on slave ships. Our experience pales when lined up against wartime, where the depths of physical deprivation and the cost of living under a cloud of fear every day are overwhelming. But still, the weariness of body and soul in the summer of 2020 is real and our feelings are valid.

 

As parents and grandparents, we are anxious as our little ones return to school – or don’t return to school. Work is scarce, the cupboards are empty and the rent is due. The threat of the virus permeates our masks, and we cringe from human touch if offered by a stranger. The struggle is real.

 

So what do we do? Like people have done for centuries, we embrace the reality of our situation without self-judgment. I turn again to the wise words of writer Connie Schultz: “Weariness is not an issue of character, nor is it a sign of weakness.” 

 

Bu we also can be reminded of who we are. Bolz-Weber’s prayer concludes: “Remind us of our own souls. Remind us that there is an essential, holy, unhurtable part of ourselves that never tires, that does not know fear, that is unaffected by other people, that cannot be irritated, that has nothing to achieve.” Christopher Robin assures his friend Winnie the Pooh, “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” 

 

While you’re masking up, backing up and washing up, remember to breathe deeply. And, like Lizzie and Pooh, try a smallish nap or two. We will get through this.