As a writer, I have felt the pull to put down on paper what 2020 was like for me. Just as you figure out your grandparents were in high school during the depression, your parents married during World War II or your instructor served in Vietnam, the year 2020 has been, seminal. Pivotal. A before and after time point, like 9/11 or the Berlin Wall falling.
As a person I have not felt any pull to write about this pandemic. This election year full of vitriol and brokenness, the social justice movements. I'm weary of the turmoil. The idea of thinking even more about it for hours and hours to draft one of my blog posts, has been anathema to my peace of mind. But this good old blog is where I write for sanity, and today, with fragile hope, I write.
Here's why: my grandchildren. I know I should be thinking of my adorable little grandson Ari who is five months old now when I write. But what has been pecking away at my conscious for months now, is what I can do, one person, for my grandchildren when they are my age -- 57. When I will be long gone, and we won't be discussing the sunshine (finally) or the apples on the table (so tart) or the soft, soft blanket he likes to snuggle into. No, this post is in hopes they will all look back and know that I did all within my power to do the right thing.
The Pandemic
I have tried to educate myself and really listen to the science. It changes regularly like all science does, as we learn more and more about Covid-19. I have tried to enjoy life rather than complain. I can still go for a hike, enjoy the color in the trees, kayak in my lake, talk to friends and family by phone, work full-time, binge-watch television series like The West Wing and Great British Baking Show, order a new footstool, try a new variety of pears, and on. So many people are focusing on what they can't do during the pandemic and I find it wearying to listen to, and boring frankly. I will need to rewrite this so I don't sound holier-than-thou, but I'm tired of hearing about how hard it is to put that cotton face mask on to go inside and pay for your gas. How lonely people are now that they can not shop the sales at Charlotte Russe and have coffee afterwards (you can, you just have to be creative).
There are parts that are hard, but a lot of them would be hard without the Coronovirus pandemic in our time. A family member and a friend's daughter both battling cancer. To do this with hospitals locked down and visitors not allowed, seems like an unfairness I'm not happy about at all. One daughter's last year of college, feels like we should be and would be in a much more celebratory mood if it weren't the pandemic. The college campuses are all struggling to stay afloat and give an education, but not add to the death toll. It isn't the college students so much at risk, but the instructors and the parents if they go home to visit on a weekend. Another daughter teaching 4th grade. All staff and students wear masks and stay six feet apart. It is better than the spring with no school at all, but it is hard to communicate emotion and energy with most of your face covered. It is very, very different. And the constant prayer, and hope, is that a cure will be discovered, a vaccine will be developed, and Covid-19 will be in those 4th graders' memories as a very odd couple of years that they will tell their grandchildren about. That feels like a reasonable hope.
Dear Ari when you are 57 and your cousins: here is life in a pandemic. I work from home now, using my laptop in different rooms of the house to login to virtual meetings from about 7am to 5pm each day. I work in the healthcare industry, so Coronovirus affects not just my free time, but my work time at least 50% with federal laws changing, our hospitals opening or closing, filling or emptying. When I go to the grocery store I wear a cloth mask. I have about a dozen now of different styles and fabrics, and some defogging spray for my glasses. I don't visit your Great-Grandma and Grandpa Evans very often, but their two kids, Cathy and Chuck do every week. Pretty much the grocery store is the main outing I experience besides your house in Congerville occasionally, and every once in a while Target for sanity, also with a mask. We get pizza delivered, drive-thru or pick up at restaurants, and don't eat inside. It is basically not that hard, for us, as we have an income, insurance, and good health so far. I don't know how bad it will get before the end, but on this day we have lost 234,534 of our dear Americans to Covid-19. In the world 1.2 million people have died.
The 2020 Election
I belong to many facebook groups such as "Christians for Biden/Harris", "Christians Against Trump", "Liberal Christian", "Nasty Lady" and others. But on my personal facebook page I've been excruciatingly restrained about the election and all it means to me. To me, it means we are chosing between eliminating evil and embracing freedom. I feel very deeply that it isn't the Republican party that is a problem (your Grandpa Chuck has occasionally voted Republican) but D. Trump, the current president, who worships only himself, with no regard for the American people, precious freedom, or Christian values. He is a bad, bad man.
At the same time, I have family and friends who believe the opposite. Because I care about them, I have chosen not to post about politics in recent months. Not to comment on any Trump fan's posts, not to argue, and not to debate. I reached a very dark point in August where I felt that Trump was going to somehow brainwash America into four more years, and then, I got hope.
Hope is fragile. It is something I grasp like a brief fragrance on the wind. It is something I have consciously, ploddingly, forced myself to feel. Hope instead of hatred. Hope instead of despair. Hope instead of anger. It has been hard. But there was a point where I realized that both sides of the political debate were feeding off of their own confident hate, at the risk of everything. Misery loves company as they say. I decided a positive attitude was the only thing that might get us back on track, and so I started my #90DaysofHope leading up to the election in two days. I guess I'm on day 88 today. I have refrained from sarcasm (so hard for me) and negativity, complaints, or venting -- a favorite of mine by the way, and I'm very, very good at it too, grandkids. I've tried to post only stories of restoration, beauty, comedy or progress. No politics, no anti-Trump or pro-Biden or pro-BLM or anything divisive.
And now, at two days before the election, I feel I must write something while I do still have hope. I know the election could go either way, and I'll find my way regardless of its outcome, but I want to write to my grandkids from a place of hope.
Dear Ari and cousins when you are 57: I am going to be an election judge on Tuesday, which means 15 hours of greeting voters to a polling place. Because I don't want you, my grandkids to think that their grandmother didn't do everything in her power to keep freedom alive. I've prayed. I've studied. I've searched for hopeful signs. I've also been worried at times, and buried my head in books or video games or bad movies. I'm not perfect by any stretch. But I am thinking of you, grandkids, as I donated money to every senate race that is up for turning blue on the last six paydays. I'm thinking of you when I put the Biden/Harris sign in my yard even though on that day this past summer I was sure some alt-righter would come in the night to deface it or steal it. I was wrong. I admit it. It still stands there expressing my views. I've never put a presidential sign in my yard as I was raised to think that like how much you make, how you vote is your own private business. That is how strongly I feel this year is different.
The world will face more disasters and illnesses and forest fires and derechos, and hope is your only hope. Try to make people smile. Try not to alienate others. And try to represent hope, because hope is fragile inside us, but it is the only thing that will bring happiness, contentment, or victory. And I've had two bald eagles who landed on our lake on the third day of the Democratic convention, when I began to feel a positive wave out there. I named them Biden and Harris and I've seen them almost every day since. I never dreamed they'd stay this long, all the way to election day. For me it is my sign from God that whatever happens, there is hope to hold on to.
Love,
Grandma Toni House Evans
November 1, 2020, two days before the election.
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| (Likely this one was Biden, based on the white hair) |
