For 2021, I decided to take up a monthly read of two Miss Read Books: Village Diary and The Year at Thrush Green. I’ve read both of these books many (man!) times before; they are familiar and happy favorites in my world. Both books have a chapter for each month of the year and I plan to read the chapter corresponding to the month at hand, progressing through the stories month-by-month.
I was teaching class this morning when the attic prisoner shot downstairs and began packing his car for the drive north back to school. JT has been a trooper for all of the isolation, never complaining as he stayed up in the attic with his books, movies, and video games. He never developed symptoms and tested negative in two quick successions after the positive test. I am grateful that he wasn’t sick and glad that he gets to return to college life. I gave him a hug and sent him north with his birthday presents - he turns 21 next month. T and I have another week on our quarantine but it was nice for one of us to earn their freedom.
As I wait out the days of my quarantine, it seems fitting that the amaryllis waits with me, each of us marking the day with a bit more daylight to soak up.
By the end of this week, we’ll be gaining an extra minute of daylight in the morning and the evening and I find that though tespecially cheering. I expect that the amaryllis feels the same way.
I woke on Inauguration Day with a light and happy feeling in my heart and though the arrival of the Biden Administration still fills me with hope, the day took a turn at 6 am, which is a bit early for my tastes.
On Sunday the 17th, JT went for a routine Covid test. He needed a negative result to return to school on the 21st and since he has no symptoms, that’s what we expected. To our surprise and dismay, his results when the test came back on the 20th were positive. From then on, it’s been nuts. JT went into isolation in the attic and I took to passing through the house with a bottle of Lysol as my companion. We checked in by text and delivered food on the regular but JT was a ghost in the house.
T and I began our quarantine by taking a Covid test and on the hour wondering if any twinge was a symptom of something greater. As the days passed, and JT didn’t have any symptoms, I began to relax slightly. T felt puny but I felt fine. Our first two tests were negative. JT will be set free to return to school on the 28th. T and I will be quarantined through the 3rd of February.
And so we wait.
I took these pictures of the sunrise on January 11 because the light was splendid and the color made me stop to enjoy the sight.
Because this kind of beauty fills me with hope.
In a few short hours, a new president comes into office. Finally, we can shed the avarice, greed, and incompetence of the old. With President Biden, there is Kamala Harris, our first woman Vice President. Both are cause for great celebration.
Desmond Tutu once said that, “Hope is being able to see there is light, despite all the darkness.” He and his nation overcame a greater challenge than we face but today, far all the ugly darkness that has been these last four years, I feel the hope. I see the light.
My heart is full, y’all. Hope is on the way.
Tomorrow is Inauguration Day; the day after that my boy returns to his college. Amidst it all, a pandemic rages on, seemingly unabated. I am teaching in a hybrid learning model that is the hardest teaching I have every done, work that leaves me exhausted in body, mind, and soul. There is a lot on my mind this month and this week seems to be filled especially with an expectancy that feels enormous.
There is a U2 song, “One,” that I have always loved. It’s a sad song, about a break-up, I suspect, but there is a line that recurs in the chorus about love and humanity that doesn’t feel broken or lost or hurt. To me, it feels like a mantra of hope: “we get to carry each other.”
Not “have to.”
Not “must.”
Not “should.”
But “get to.” I’ve thought of that line so much over the years but especially this year, when the pandemic has meant that so much feels uncertain and different; even at times careening out of control. When I’ve felt powerless in the face of it all, I’ve reminded myself to find the strength to carry someone else.
Martin Luther King Day is always a chance to remind myself of what matters, what’s truly important, and how we must all do our part for justice in the beloved community. I think Dr. King believed that we must carry each other; and that we get to do so it is an honor as much as it is a duty.
Plotting and planning front porch decor is one of my happy pleasures in life and I look forward to a porch that is a welcome place. In this cold season, I don’t spend loads of time out here but the month’s table reminds me how much I do love the time I spend here in the warm weather. The month’s theme is hope….for new leadership, for a vaccine, for the health and safety of us all.
January has proven itself to be full of events and in the midst of all that, I nearly lost sight of the weekly amaryllis photo. But here is my bulb showing a bit of a green stem if you look closely.
I can’t be the only person who felt that the past few days have been 96 hours of time filled with a historical and political significance greater than such a small amount of hours can rightfully contain. As long as I’ve taught, I’ve explained to my students that political time is different than regular time, in that significant political events can happen suddenly and that the conflagration and reverberation of them can consume our attention for far longer than the moment lasted. At the same time, a hard month or a year can feel interminable as you live through it though as historical time such days can often amount to less than a hill of beans.
Both of these things are true, though rarely at once. And then along comes January 2021 to shake all that what we think we know. Today I remind myself that there are some things - important things - that we do know.
Some - perhaps many - of the January 6 Insurgents were bent on ugly violence toward a democratically elected government. They call themselves patriots even as they fly the flag of a racist - and failed - rebellion. That is not patriotism.
Donald Trump, a man who won the Electoral College without winning the popular vote, deluded himself into believing that meant something. After a lifetime of self-absorption he never once considered anything, least of all an oath to uphold the Constitution, more important than his own desires. Our democracy will pay a price for this far longer than he will govern.
Courage, in the form of some members of Congress and their staffs, some Capitol Hill police officers, and some of our leaders, can inspire.
Other so-called leaders inspire only contempt as they wickedly flee the sinking ship that is the Trump Administration. Worse yet are those who defend it, hopeful that their own ambitions can find fruition in what remains of the Trump coalition. Shame on them.
Cultivating democracy is hard work but the work of us all, undertaken with hope and sustained through our effort and engagement, even as that is hard. Especially when it is difficult. President-elect Biden says we can do hard things and we can. Indeed, we must.
I had so many thoughts about Wednesday’s events tumbling about in my head as I tucked into bed that night, My mind was still whirring when when I got up on Thursday to catch up with the overnight news. My challenge that day was too quickly make sense of it all so that I could talk it over with my three classes of 8th grade Civics & Citizenship students, using our shared knowledge of Civics and history to try and understand. When I first proposed teaching this class, I thought that the topic was timely. But I had no idea how timely it would be. Throughout the 2020 election season, we’ve explored and discussed the events of the day. When we broke for Winter Break, my plan for Thursday’s class had been to review how Electoral College certification worked and then to discuss the Georgia Senate elections. I was ready for that. Insurrection by Trump’s merry band of deplorables took me by surprise.
In hindsight, that was foolish on my part.
When class started today, the language of choice for participants in the Capitol Hill takeover was protesters turned rioters. By the afternoon, they were insurrectionists. That word gave my afternoon class a better tool to wrap their minds around the events. The promising news is that the 8th grade saw the events for what they were: an intemperate and foolhardy collection of people bent on while denying the legitimacy of our most recent democratic election because the outcome did not suit their desires. My students also understood quite clearly that the rules for this mob were different than the rules that BLM marchers faced in their Summer protests.
That ability to see truths will serve them well as our understanding of the January 6 Insurrection unfolds. For my part, I hope that the collective memory that lingers from the event is of the way that American democracy endured and triumphed in the aftermath. As an American, that must be by goal. I am here for the hard work to come. For now, that will have to suffice.
The backstory: As we watched the January 6 Senate debate unfold (more on that soon), Kelly Loeffler, Republican from Georgia, stood up to speak. I turned to T and offered a thought.
Me: That woman spent $100 million of her own money to get re-elected to the Senate.
T: No…she spent $100 million to lose the Senate race.
Truth. Democrats picked up both the seats in Georgia’s January 5 run-off election and with it control of the U.S. Senate. That good news was overshadowed thanks to the Wednesday’s events at the Capitol. But when the dust settles, the victory of Rapfael Warnock and Jon Ossoff will matter a great deal. In these hard times, that is good news.
Just one week in to its planting, the amaryllis is still getting used to its pot. There is probably a metaphor in that information but I’m busily gearing up for a return to teaching and so it will take me a bit to make sense of it all.
As twilight settled on the evening of the 31st, I lit two luminaries to light the path for the new year. They burned brightly through the night as T, JT, and I played card games, listened to a playlist of music curated by the boy, and laughed together.
The laughter was especially nice.
As T and I prepared to climb the stairs and tuck into bed, JT told us that if someone had told him at the start of the year that 2020’s last day would be spend in our company instead of with his friends, he would not have embraced that news. Then he told us that the evening felt good and right; that’s he’d had a good time with is and wouldn’t have spent it any other way.
In a 2020 that brought fear and uncertainty, that found the three of us being cooped up for months and occasionally feeling a little too close with one another, my son was on the mark in that observation. In this year of so much loss, I will be forever glad of the extra time to watch him grow up far more than just one year signifies. The last night of 2020 was a good one for counting my blessings as we looked to the light.
There was a nearly full moon in the night sky for New Year’s Eve. Late in the night, we stepped outside in the still cold air to admire the moon and, in my case, to ask for its blessing on the new year to come. Things didn’t stay quiet for long as my neighbors let off fireworks and generally gave release to the tensions and fears of 2020, welcoming 2021 with cheers and laughter. The celebrations were joyous as we all faced forward to 2021.
I welcome this year with open arms and hope, even a tentative confidence, that we can rise above the ignorance and fears that have characterized the last four years. We need to do better; indeed we must. The load to be lifted is heavy but I have confidence that we will come together and try anew to be the shining city on the hill that we must work toward becoming.
In the spirit of this hope and to welcome the start of each month in 2021, I will post pictures of Old Man Tree, the giant red oak that lives in my backyard and daily frames my view of the world outside my door. Today he presides over the snacks we’ve left out for the backyard wildlife.
I love this tree, which is one of the oldest red oaks in my county. The arborist who keeps Old Man Tree healthy and well believes that the tree is more than 130 years old. He’s seen a lot, this tree, and he endures, steadfast and strong through the storms of this world. His continued health is my responsibility. I take that seriously.
He got a new face last month and like all of us in Sassafras House looks for a new year with hope. There is much to be learned from this tree that bears witness to our lives. I intend to do just that in the coming year.
