A Month Later
Join me in entertaining this prompt from Anne Lamott: How are you different now than you were a month ago? | #bookpassageprompts #writeitbad
I would like to start with what I haven’t changed much — which is my underwear. This detail points to one of the first things that has truly changed in the last month, which is my view of what’s acceptable behavior, hygiene, and personal habits in this current, new, strange, crazy-ass reality. Though it’s not really all that strange. I mean, if I didn’t turn on the TV and just paid attention to what’s right in front of me—my family, my yoga mat, the trees, shelves of books, mounds of dishes, piles of laundry, Netflix—I wouldn’t even know the world was canceled at all.
A month ago, I was driving to pick up my son from school on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, looking east at St. Helena in the sun-soaked distance across the endless acres of bare winter grape vines, listening to XYZ on the radio, and I remember being so happy in that moment, so full, and also so wistfully aware that this beautiful, complete moment was only fleeting—that my kid would grow up, that the weather would change, that the mountain would continue to erode, perhaps catch fire, that I would someday not be driving these bucolic backcountry roads with life on my side. One day. One day, I thought, this would all be changed. And indeed now it is, but not in the usual, inevitable ways or in the span of a lifetime as I had imagined.
A month ago, I wasn’t scared. I was already living with a fair amount of anxiety (meaning enough to keep my monkey mind juggling several sharp items but not enough to alarm or alert others). Today, my anxiety is different. It’s less, but also more. I’m no longer stressed or anxious about sleeping past my alarm, making school lunches, or getting to work on time. I’m no longer stressed or anxious about carpools, soccer practices, field trips, dentist appointments, or playdates. I’m no longer stressed or anxious about what plans to make with which friends or what excuses to make to escape those plans when I’ve been running around so much and all I want to do is stay home. I’m no longer stressed or anxious about never being home.
And now here I am. At home. All the time. And you know how I’ve changed? My stress and anxiety has morphed, as if I've fallen through the looking glass. Now I’m anxious that I don’t have to set my alarm, that my kids aren’t eating breakfast at the usual time, that I have no job to go to. Now I’m stressed and anxious that I can’t take my kids to school, watch them play soccer, chaperon on field trips, attend preventative care appointments, miss out on seeing friends. Now I’m anxious that I have no plans to make and no reason to want to escape those plans. Now I’m stressed and anxious that I’m home all the time and still not getting all the things done that I swore I would do if I were just home more often and enough.
But, I have to admit that there are ways in which I am thriving in this time, during The Big Slowdown. And I am grateful for the privilege of having my basic needs met so I can thrive in these ways. ... The self-study (svadhyaya). The stacks of books. The free online lectures and meditations. The online yoga. The daily workouts. The ability to keep up with household chores. The ability to share household chores with the children. The togetherness. Oh, the togetherness. So. Much. Damn. Togetherness. It’s a good things we like each other. Or, at least, I think we’re finding out that we really, really do (between the angry or annoying times). The 12-year-old has only screamed once that he “hated himself and his life and we were making him do something he didn’t want to do even though we knew he didn’t want to do it!” This was in response to being asked to help in the garden, which was really in response to being asked to get off his video games to do it. But, really, even though we each have the occasional emotional peak, I think in the last few weeks we have all settled a bit, softened and leaned in to our family life and each other, established our own individual space and time as well. We’re sleeping more, spending more time with the dogs, playing music (piano, guitar), building mouse-trap cars, shooting arrows, planting seeds and building gardens, rebuilding and refinishing the deck, playing board games, making yoga videos, reading books … and Stopping Not Writing. Thank you, Anne Lamott, for the directive, the reminder, the invitation to Stop Not Writing. ... This is just the starting of the stopping.
@annelamott + @samlamott #bookpassageprompts #writeitbad