A Fragile Hope: Dear Grandkids

 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. 

(Likely this one was Biden, based on the white hair)

Quarantine 2020

Notes from the quarantine we are in for Novel Coronovirus/Covid-19 worldwide Pandemic.

The first week
Even normal things aren't normal.  Everything feels like I am part of a movie script, one where something unpleasant is about to happen to the characters.  Every glance, every movement, looking for clues as to where the trouble is.  Even routine things like taking out the trash feel heightened, to have some deeper meaning, but I don't know what that meaning is.  I'm waiting.  Is my throat sore? I'm sure I caught it traveling.

The first month
The first month for me was mid-March to mid-April 2020.  A kind of haze seemed to surround things.  I spent a lot of time obsessing over news channels on my phone, reading scientific articles, trying to become as educated as possible.  Uncertainty is the flavor of the month and it doesn't taste great.  I heard about the COVID-19 malaise and I thought, even without contracting this virus, I have the malaise.  Lethargy set in.  I binge-watched The Good Doctor, New Amsterdam, 9-1-1, Doc Martin, and many others that now escape my memory.  I appreciate laughter so much.  Being stuck in one small space together is not easy.  But each time I hear the laughter this month, I think 'Is this the last time?'  It feels like the world is going to reach our front porch any moment.

Some silver linings to this time in-between
I notice the flowers in my yard, innocently blooming, unaware the world has taken a 180 degree turn.

My morning cup of coffee means a lot to me.  Another day with no one sick in the house.  A marker in the days that flow together. Will tomorrow bring illness?

The girls dusted off and set up the Wii and we dug out old CDs of Just Dance.  It has been a blessing.  We've played card games, the four of us in my circle of germ-sharing. Dutch Blitz, Ticket to Ride, Just One.  Four 1000 piece puzzles in that first month while the cold and rain and wind and snow continued.

For my birthday in January I got a sewing machine from the kids, and I got it out for its inaugural run to sew face masks for my family.  We tried out phone apps like 'Houseparty' and had better luck with 'Marco Polo'. We talked about teaching ourselves to play the piano (hasn't happened yet, but hey).  I study the 1918 flu pandemic and learn the word vaccine didn't exist for the average person.

The second month
I feel like I took a deep breath and noticed my surroundings.  We are all here.  We have a grandchild coming.  We did not have a traditional Easter but it is ok, not to have everyone together. So much better than ok.  I start feeling like so many novels I've read about WWII.  The victory gardens, the rationing, the black-out curtains, the obedience for a higher good than my own self-fulfillment.  My perspective turns, I realize this is a truly historical period, that will be referred to just as often as September 11th or other moments that humanity shares.  Everyone in my family is united in treating this 'stay at home' order with solemnity.  And in getting through it together. 

People talk about this being a time of mourning and it is.  It is so many things.  I try not to mourn superficial things like my gray hair that has grown out without my hairdresser.  But I do mourn that spring break trip Anna had to cancel and the baby shower we can't perceive of holding any time this year and feeling good about it.

So it turns out for me, quarantine is about having so many feelings, all in the same 24 hours.  I get depressed, I get annoyed, I get angry, I get sad, I get excited, I get a nap (yay), I get anxious, exhausted from overtime at work, tired of my pajamas, started watching the evening news again.  I'm not a worrier at heart, but so far this quarantine has felt a LOT like a movie script and I want to be one step ahead of the scriptwriter.  I want to be prepared.  That involves a lot of pseudo-worrying.

Here are some pictures of this time period that I want to save here.  What Quarantine 2020 was like for me, in pictures.

Remember how the whole world put hearts in their windows?  To recognize the nurses and doctors, the EMTs and police and fire.  The postmen and UPS delivery women, and everyone else who kept working, so we could #staysafeathome ?

Remember that year all salons were closed, and your gray hair grew out.  But there was no one at home who minded?  These pictures were both taken the same day.  My gray isn't visible at my hair line :)  Who knew. 

Nature doesn't know it is a strange year, 2020.  Nature just goes right along. 

Easter morning worshiping through YouTube.  Anna's first attempt at homemade croissant.

Visiting the grandparents from six feet away. 

Farm n Fleet parking lot for our safe-distance visit with Chris and Jenny.  She is 33 weeks along here.

We celebrated two birthdays 'in lockdown' as they say,  so far.  Julia's 21st and Anna's 25th.

A social distancing approved virtual baby shower for Baby Evans.  He is due June 2.  

Future self, these are all things that have really happened in March and April of 2020.  Restaurants (drive-thru only), bars, malls, non-essential stores have all closed.  Everyone is wearing a face mask in public and staying at least six feet from all other humans.  School has been closed since March 16.  A ten week-long 'snow day'.  After fighting so hard for years to get one 'work from home day' a week we now have 100% work from home at my employer.  Not everyone is finding it to their liking.  Zoom book club.  Toilet paper shortages.  Hand sanitizer at a premium. Lots of good memes. Porch drop and runs. Cruise ships.  Air Pollution disappeared.  Millions have been laid off or unemployed.  I can't go to the eye doctor or the dentist. I've had poison ivy for two weeks, driving me insane. No yoga, no hair salons are open.  There is an election in six months and no election campaign commercials. I wonder if a year from now, or ten years from now, any of us will believe this all really happened?

At the root of this it is all about the dying.  We've passed the 3 million mark for Covid-19 cases in the world and  the 60,000 mark for U.S. deaths at the time I'm posting this.  Everyone is talking about how it is more deaths than the entire Vietnam war. Lord, hear my prayer, that your will for us is to be past the worst of this crisis and able to move on to whatever is next. Give us patience.

I've been witnessing the worst and the best in human nature.  It is like a magnifying glass has been placed over our characters, and all those quotes I'm so fond of, they are all revealing their truths.  How you act when you don't have to is just as important as how you act when you do have to. Character is revealed under pressure.   The bad news is out there and I'm a better person for having read it. Even if less naive and sadder.   The good news is also out there and I'm a better person for finding it and reading it all.  Such a feeling of a common purpose, the world, trying to save themselves but also trying to save their fellow-human-beings.  Worthy.  We are worthy.

Mother of the Bride Impressions -- Part TWO

Afterwards

                           
Boy do my feet ache.  And my ankles, wrists, ears and pinky toes.  Weddings are physically exhausting. So many many thoughts.   Quite different than Mother of the Groom.  I would compare it to the difference in attending a commencement ceremony for your child (MOG).  Happy, smiles, lots of pride.  To holding the graduation party for 200 at your own home.  Responsible, brain-draining, expensive (ha) and cheerfully chaotic (MOB).  It is as 'hands on' as anything gets. 

Advice for future Mothers of the Bride: Get yourself two 'matrons of honor' for yourself.  Two more people who aren't brain-fuzzy from all the excitement and willing to run out for forks, run upstairs for the scissors, text the person lost in the country, thank the hairdresser when you forget, keep an eye on the time, trim the shaggy chiffon three times if necessary.  Someone to remember to confirm the nail appointment, figure out which nearby florist has baby's breath, and not order twice as much pizza as we need.  Someone who will know at all times 'Where is the father of the bride?'  'Where did the bridesmaids go?'  'Did the photographer get a pic yet with grandma and grandpa?'  'Where is the food?  Where is the saran wrap/the veil/the salsa?   Because me, I wanted to just sit and observe, and soak in all the happenings.  Of course I did, lots and lots, but I also felt like two more me's would have been so useful!

Funny (?...?) things that happened on the wind up to the wedding:

• Flowers. The flower delivery was scheduled for Wednesday morning.  The flowers were delivered but only the lilies showed up.  Thurs: the flowers didn't show up, long wait, finally an email that the plane didn't land.  Thurs 5pm: neighbor comes home from work and brings the flowers that were delivered to his porch and sat there all day.  blah. Still missing the hydrangeas (they came Friday, its all good)
• Directions. North main, south main, construction, CR 17 to CR 20 to old CR 17 to ???  Two chapels on campus?  Phone died?  Cakes are 45 minutes in the opposite direction of where you are? Father of the bride is 12 miles to empty and is lost in the country?  An hour before we leave for the church? Thank you Lord for Google Maps and the kindness of strangers.  Send all people in twos!
• Steaming.  Not really a mishap, but if purchasing the tablecloths is half the price of renting them, assume 20 minutes per table cloth to steam out the wrinkles.  Let's see, 30 table cloths x 20 minutes each = 600 minutes or 6 hours.  With breaks, the two steamers we had running out of water every 9 minutes, heat up time, switching peeps, it was about 10 hours on Friday.  
• Weather.  I knew this from Chris' wedding but all of these weather predictions are for May 18, 2019, for many days leading up to the big day.  We were planning an outdoor wedding in the back of a huge field of grass.  We needed a dry day.  It snowed two inches four weeks earlier.  We didn't know what to think but it ended up sunny and high of 85 degrees on this date.  I'll take it!

                                

• Random: the father of the bride's phone rang during the ceremony.  He was too rattled to figure out how to turn it off.  The silver bells we had tied two-hundred bows onto were nowhere to be found for the send-off moment (we just clapped and cheered).  They were in the groomsmen's dressing room it turned out.  I brought earrings.  One from each of the two pairs I had for the occasion, not matching.  I didn't wear earrings (gasp).

Things that went pleasingly well:

• Having too big of a house is never a bad thing!  Having a large whirlpool tub in the bathroom of the parents' master suite averts some muscle pain. Our airbnb saved the day many times. 
• Chuck and I (and my sister) shopping for cake plates for the centerpieces at goodwills and estate sales was a sweet way to anticipate the coming wedding. 
• Cake in the middle of each table meant no long line and fresh slices for everyone in just the size they wanted. 

                                     

• Having family come a few days early so we could eat pizza and watch the swans on the lake who we named 'Nat and Lily' and laugh together at Jim Gaffigan videos before the tension and nerves of the final day set in? Priceless. 
• If you can arrange a nice gentle breeze like we had it makes the bridesmaids dresses and the veil look pretty magical. Just sayin'
• Daughter things: Watching your youngest do her oldest sisters' makeup and it coming out perfectly. An amazing scrapbook Anna and Julia designed with pics of the five months and letters from special women in Lily's life to read on her wedding day and afterwards. Signs all hand-lettered by the artist-daughter.  Short-bread baked with love by Anna. 556 shortbread cookies to be specific :).  And two other desserts baked by Nat's sisters!

                            

• Bride and groom things: Having a daughter-bride with great imagination and event-planning skills and an eye for details made everything go better than expected. She was so patient with all of us. I think I kind of like her :)  Having a groom with such a sense of humor to lighten the mood and to calm everyone's worries, especially his bride-to-be. Good guy, that Nat. 
• Friends and Family things: a wedding is very different when you are hosting than all those weddings you've attended.  Having family and friends fly in from Texas, San Francisco, drive from four and five hours away, my friends Leslie and Sean with six kids on board drove from Iowa, that all touched my heart.  I'm going to try to remember it next time I get one of those pesky wedding invitations, lol. 
• New in-laws things: they welcomed us to their church and their family.  Their hospitality was genuine.  And they stayed long after the party to cleanup as church had to be held in that room the next morning.  They let me leave behind catered food that would feed dozens (we had a lot of leftover food), 15 or so 'half cakes' and even 30 dirty table cloths.  They work so well as a team!
• Son and daughter-in-law things: Jenny and Chris did the work of 12 x-men.  They were on everything.  From Chris driving up for the bachelor party to them both doing a majority of that 10 hours of steaming, to picking up the cakes (sounds innocent, not).  That is 22 cakes in separate boxes, across 20 miles of bumps and turns on ten different roads.  Then transferring them inside the church and onto the cake plates.  Talk about walking a tight rope!  This plus they did literally 5 dozen other tasks.  

                                           

• Husband things: watching him tear-up, watching him dance with his daughter, watching him walk her up the aisle, it was all just like in the movies, for once in my life (ha).  He worked way harder than me as always.  Such a great guy, Lily's dad. 
• Most importantly, all the things that didn't go as planned, that weren't quite as picturesque, weren't exactly on point or lined up or on time?  No one knows!  The guests don't know, the photographers don't know.  To everyone else it appears it all went as planned so no worries. 
• God things: the breeze, the very funny pastor Luis (Nat's oldest brother), the lilies of the valley that only bloom one week of the year, in full bloom, the guests and bridal party traveling from far away, the love and kindness in the air, a special moment, the group prayer. Of course, every little thing comes from above. 

                           
I thought I was seriously looking forward to the day after the wedding because of all the drama, tears, tensions, worries, details, details, details but instead I do feel a teeny bit like a popped balloon.  But mostly I feel very satisfied that we did our best, that people had fun, and that Lily and Nat have begun their marriage, the reason for everything we did.  The Godly man I prayed for every communion Sunday for my sweet Lily, is Nathaniel, and I can't wait to see what love and life brings them.

  Praise be to God!