Covid-19

Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler!

Jeanna G1 Comment

It’s Marci Gras! I did my part to make sure Fat Tuesday lived up to its name by making and eating an absurd amount of gumbo and cornbread. I’ve never been to the Mardi Gras festival, but I have been to New Orleans, and our hotel was right on Bourbon Street, and we visited the Mardi Gras museum to see the floats. I was also traveling with my 7-year-old at the time, so I had to be somewhat prudent. Anyhow, I was watching the news this morning about New Orleans and how there is no parade because of Covid, but houses and yards are decorated to the nines. One interviewee said, “The parade may be cancelled, but the spirit of Marci Gras cannot!” And that is when I got teary-eyed.

I don’t know about you, but I hope post-Covid celebrations rush in like someone opened the floodgates. Potential memories are being stolen from us. Sweet memories of passing out cupcakes on your birthday or Valentines to your classmates were erased like a chalkboard this past year. Dancing like nobody’s watching on a crowded amphitheater lawn is only a hallucination. Singing the school fight song with 109,000 other fans in the university stadium must have been a figment of my imagination. Hugging and holding hands? Only in our wildest dreams. Festivals, reunions, and play dates are all fictional chapters of our now boring lives. Gosh, I even fantasize about struggling to get the bartender’s attention during happy hour!

I hope when we become a herd again, we become immune to boredom. I hope we flock together and have a parade. A day of parades all over the world with singing and dancing, and everyone has a seat together at the grandstand with a perfect view of the spectacle. But the timing of these Mardi Gras celebrations will be reversed, because we’ve been abstaining for too long, as if we’d given up togetherness for lent. It’s time for the spirit of Mardi Gras that has been hibernating in our hearts to wake up, take a real good stretch, and let the good times roll!

Auld Lang Syne

Jeanna G1 Comment

2020. A year described by many as the following: A dumpster fire, shit show, kerfuffle, nightmare come true, omnishambles, hullabaloo, all hell broken loose, catastrophe, three ring circus, royal fuck up, comedy of errors, bizarre, unrivaled, hellacious, apocalyptic, calamity, and a world turned upside down.

WHO reports that, as I write this, over 74 million people have contracted the virus worldwide. I read in the Wall Street Journal that a quarter of all US jobs were disrupted as a result of the pandemic. The election divided us. Racial inequities lead to murders and riots. Fires and storms wreaked havoc on and devastated our habitats. Our ways of living, communicating, and interacting have all been upended and recreated. It’s not surprising that there has been a collective yearning for 2020, and all that came with it, to end and to never be thought of again.

But should old times be forgot and never brought to mind?

Uncertainty, worry, and feeling useless all took their toll and caused depression, an old acquaintance of mine, to rear its ugly head. But as time has shown, I’m a survivor who does not relish in pity parties. I also can’t be idle, no matter how often I think I ought to give it a try.

And so I move. And I do. And I retrain my brain to think positively and make the best of a situation. And that takes work. And it’s because of that energy and movement that, despite the headlines, I am grateful for this year.

This year has gifted me with the time and permission to think. I mean really think. Like not just about what I have to do that day, but go deep into the recesses of my brain and think about all of the things I usually don’t have the time or energy to think about. And there is a lot of stuff in there! I wrote some of it down in this blog, which I’m happy to have had the time to create this year. Other thoughts I wrote in the journal I’ve been keeping for my daughter since I was pregnant. Others I shared with my friends, because they also had time to just sit and think and ponder life with me. And some I just shared with God, because at the end of the day it’s just me and Him, and I can’t fool either one of us. I wonder if having and spending all of this time thinking is how the Ancient Greek philosophers felt in their day-to-day lives.

For the last few years, life was moving so quickly, and I didn’t feel like I could keep up at times. This year, time seemed to slow. I had time to play with my daughter. Time to try new things. Time to reintroduce old things. Time to contemplate and assess where I had been, where I was, and where I was going. And it has all made me feel a lot better about life. What began as a joke between friends became the mantra “We Are Here,” which we now repeat at our get-togethers. There’s something to be said for living in the moment. And so in 2021, as life starts to speed up again, my resolution is to make it a point to slow down and make time for the important stuff that, for reasons I still need to think about, I had put on the back burner.

And so 2020, for auld lang syne my dear, I’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.

Reading Into Things

Jeanna GLeave a comment

Growing up, I was not much of a bookworm. I spent my time outside running wild. Books and reading were of little interest to me. I enjoyed school and I did what I needed to do to get good grades, but as soon as I was done, Poof! I was outta there.

Once I hit college I had to read endless amounts of textbooks for my degree. I was interested in what I was learning, but once I was done with my studies, the last thing I wanted to do was curl up with a good book.

It wasn’t until I was a new mom that I really got into reading for pleasure. One of my favorite, most recent memories is of the summer my daughter and I moved into our own place. She was a year and a half and still took naps. We’d start our day with a wagon ride to the pool. A few splashes there and then we’d wheel back home for lunch. A stroller ride to lull her to sleep, and then after artfully transitioning her to bed, I would make my way to the balcony where I would enjoy a cocktail while reading my summer novels for a couple of hours. I was still teaching, so I had summers off. This was our daily routine, and I loved it.

I would be transported to another time, another place, another life. It was so easy to get lost in those books. I enjoyed those days, but that was just the beginning of a very physically and emotionally exhausting period of my life: single-motherhood.

I remember when I was a child and I’d be running through the house until I saw my mom lying on the couch, with one arm resting across her forehead, and a romance novel in her other hand. I would quickly slow down to quietly pass her by, hopefully undisturbed. I had enough intuition to know that was her time, her escape, her need in that moment. I knew then, but now I get it. I often wonder if she was actually reading, or if the book was more of a warning sign for us to leave her alone.

This past weekend was the unofficial start to summer, and although I don’t have summers off anymore, I don’t want to stop diving into beach reads. I prefer to borrow books than buy them, but with the libraries being closed because of Covid-19, I caved and bought both a paperback and an online copy of new summer must-reads.

That first summer of reading and this one are very similar in that I needed an escape. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling the need to be transported to another place and time, somewhere far removed from the current state of affairs. Finding the right book can be such a cure. To passersby, I’m just lazing in my hammock in my backyard, but I’m really in some imaginary beach house on Nantucket observing the heroine figure out her love life amidst all of her naive mistakes.

My daughter came to me yesterday to tell me her favorite things about living in our new home. One is our nighttime routine of cuddling while I read to her. Although we’ve done that everywhere we’ve lived, it is heartwarming to know she values those moments. I hope that I’ve instilled the desire to read, not just to develop the skill, but as a way of opening her mind to the possibilities that reading can provide. When we read we are not just peeking in on the lives of the characters, but we’re getting insight into the author’s experiences, opinions, thoughts, and ideas, which we can then draw upon to create our own real experiences. But I suppose I’m preaching to the choir with that gem!

I think our imaginations are naturally stronger as children. So if reading helps us to grow our imagination, it is also serves as a juvenescent elixir! How about that connection! Or am I just reading into things?

What books helped you to grow your imagination and feel youthful?