The rainbow lights were not my choice, but my pleasure. We have new, multi-colored bulbs inside and out, because saying yes to small, joyful, affordable things feels almost necessary this year.
Until the older boys turn the conversation toward carbon footprints, and then I feel guilt because we've eaten meat and run the furnace and purchased plastic rainbow lights.
When someone asks how I'm doing, I don't know what to say. We are covid-good.
It's almost Christmas, we can almost get a vaccine. It's almost 2021, there's almost a new head of nation.
There is hope.
Tucker asks me to proofread his narrative before submission, my job to find mistakes, his job (right now, academically speaking) perhaps to risk making them.
Show me the part that feels hard, I try to remember to say to the boys when they seem frustrated.
All of it, I understand.
For months there's been this inner war of allowing myself to feel sad versus telling myself to be grateful.
I know I'm not alone in my loneliness, in the way I'm doing my best to get through the falling apart. I text with friends and cousins and my sister, and I take some comfort in knowing that we're all losing our minds together. Solidarity matters.
We tell the boys again and again that they can be anybody, can do anything. Hang rainbow lights, wear skirts, fly to the moon, be a youtube star. Show up, buy solar panels, abandon a bad book.
We tell the boys, also, the most important thing an individual can do right now may be to act a little less individually.
Handmade ornaments that capture the year. Comics under the table. The nativity on the piano bench. Those stained glass stars. Lights and wonder! That old punch bowl enjoying a new and useful existence. Darwin and Calvin are so big now. Coding/video successes. Stringing popcorn... and what is the story behind that look with the Jello??? Next year maybe I can join that card game?
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