2020

It was going to be a year at home anyway, so at least the timing was good.

Zach and I were fresh back from seven months spent in Portland, living with his dad, Zach working at the Walmart there three days a week, with plenty of Northwestern adventures on the other four days. 

We had frolicked through the Douglas firs all those months, but in late 2019 we were now back in shivery, silver-gray Missouri, this time with a housemate, Lydia (and Eddie the cat). It was a transition period back into this new way of life, and like all transitions, it was bumpy. Reconnecting with family and friends is always a bit rough, and to top it off, we had just joined a new church and were trying to make ourselves known there too.

Around January of 2020, I felt like I was hitting my stride. I was getting used to living with Lydia; I was starting to learn people's names at church; I was seeing my friends after nearly a year apart; I was beginning to feel at home again. Zach and I made a goal for the year: host teaching events twice a month at our house to pass on some of the knowledge we'd gained. Neighbors, friends, and coworkers gathered in our little dining room while we demonstrated how to make sauerkraut, sourdough bread, and kefir. I gathered a little group and we discussed "zero waste" and environmentalism.

It was going to be a year full of structure, a quiet year at home.

Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

"I don't think it'll be a big deal," my sister, a flight attendant, said on the phone. I was walking in the cold February sunshine on the biking trail near my house. I didn't know enough about the subject at hand to even have an opinion. Some virus, like swine flu, like west nile. We'd done this before. The word "pandemic" wasn't in my vocabulary. 

"Yeah, I hope so," I said.

In March, I tried to sit apart from everyone else on the bus. I had a slight sniffle, and had put an inordinate amount of thought into whether or not I should ride the bus at all. But I hadn't seen my best friend Amy in weeks, and so I took the journey.

At her house, we learned that WashU was shutting down in-person classes. 

"That can't be," I said. I felt cold and off-balance.

"I really hope this doesn't mean that [a conference she really wanted to go to] is called off," she said.

"Amy, that's borrowing trouble. July is months away."

She drove me home.

The country entered lockdown. They called it lockdown. It wasn't. It was the lower classes serving the upper classes.

The internet blew up with telling people to stay inside, quarantine jokes, people complaining about all the booooring free time they had, stern warnings from every corner to not go out if at all possible. Stay home, stay safe! STAY HOME, STAY SAFE!

Every day, Zach and Lydia got up and went to work at Walmart.

STAY HOME! STAY SAFE!

Every day, they worked their jobs and hundreds of people breathed on them. This was before masks were even a thought.

STAY HOME! STAY SAFE!

We wondered if we should let this or that friend visit even though everyone was urging us to STAY HOME, STAY SAFE.

It was ludicrous. 

It was clown-like.

There was no lockdown. 

You're a hero, people told Zach at work every day.

You're a hero!

They breathed on him and said, You're a hero!

And also why are you out of the good toilet paper?! I demand the softest toilet paper! This is a crisis!!!

I flailed about for something useful to do.

(Sure, teaching online as usual is always useful, but that's my life. I wanted to do something else, something extra.) 

I put out a bin by our garage and filled it with toilet paper and canned goods. I advertised its location on Facebook Marketplace. For a few days people brought food. Someone left mac n' cheese and I took it because I wanted comfort food. A few days later, someone stole the entire bin. I didn't tell anyone online that this had happened, because I couldn't stand to hear one more rant about how selfish people are and how you can't do anything nice for people because something like this will happen.

I wondered if the person who took the whole bin had hoped that grabbing it would make them feel safe.

I wonder if taking it made them feel secure, just for a tiny moment.

If so, I don't mind. 

We needed to hold on to anything.

The Internet told me, You're not going to be your best in the middle of a fucking pandemic.

That's true, I thought. But I can't just sit around and barely get through each day. I have to help. I'm DIFFERENT!

I potted up garden plants, raised money and bought some tomato plants at a nursery. I spent hours nurturing them, sorting them, labeling them, prepping them. I posted "garden starter packs" for free and spent two days navigating the dance of giving stuff away on the Internet. At last all the plants were in people's hands.

Did any of the gardens live? I don't know.

My own garden started strong, and then I stopped caring for it. I couldn't bring myself to water, or weed, or catalogue what I was doing. It grew wild. The wild patches shaded each other, allowing spring crops to grow far into summer. I successfully grew carrots for the first time in years, by doing nothing. The kale is immortal.

My friends, including my brother, started gardens. They asked for advice. I tried to give it. Nurture the soil. Everything depends on the soil. Good soil means good plants. It's no use fussing over the plants if the soil isn't right.

My yard descended into brown weeds, broken stems, a jungle of green.

Why am I giving advice? I don't actually know how to do any of this stuff.

I didn't do anything to the soil. It was fertile river bottomland clay. I put wood chips on top and immortal kale grew. Who am I to give advice about the privileges I have? Why do I say anything at all?

My brother grew more food than I did over the summer. Someone teasingly pointed out that he was "putting me to shame." I closed my laptop and sobbed on my bed.

~~~

Zach and I hiked a lot. We hiked in parks we had never visited, hiked among the spring ephemerals in April and the falling leaves in October. Time felt distorted, odd, disconnected, even as the seasons marched along, winter to spring, spring to summer, summer to fall. Winter is coming.

You're a hero, people told Zach as they showed up to Walmart and yelled at the front clerk for asking them to wear a mask. 

You're a hero, people said as they walked up to Zach and pulled down their mask to talk to him.

You're a hero, said the people snapping at him for meat prices being so high.

There was no lockdown.

And then there wasn't even that.

There are two sides of this issue, people said as white protestors stormed a state capitol demanding that businesses open again. We must have grace and accept both sides as equally valid, because people's opinions are never going to agree. 

I knew why people were upset. I knew why people wanted to go back to normal. The government has shut us down and left many people without any money. 

Zach said, "Can you imagine how the media would be covering this if the protestors were Black men in hoodies?"

George Floyd couldn't breathe. 

I had thought that I was doing okay with my little anti-racism self-improvement endeavors. I thought that I was enlightened, on the path to goodness, listening and learning.

I realized it wasn't enough.

Nothing was enough.

I marched down the streets of my city screaming, "No justice, no peace!" My sister, laid off from the flight industry, marched beside me along with hundreds of others. My old choir teacher, Mrs. Roth, and her husband walked behind us, clearly uncomfortable, but determined to be there, determined to show up in this moment.

Mrs. Roth died of pneumonia a couple months later. She was younger than my parents. I shivered through the socially-distanced funeral in the bright cold sunlight and wept.

Everyone rushed to put black squares on Instagram, to grab the hashtags, to peddle their wokeness as fast as possible. I put antiracism books on reserve at the library. I read and I thought. I learned and I listened.

Learning and listening wasn't enough.

Nothing was enough.

There are two sides of this issue, people said. We must have grace and accept both sides as equally valid, because people's opinions are never going to agree. 

No, I said. No. No. No. I'm tired of people's opinions being matters of life and death. I'm tired of people having the opinion that the world's top scientists are lying about masks, pandemics, and climate change. I'm tired of people having the opinion that racism isn't real and that Black people are overreacting. I'm tired of this being treated like an opinion binary where both sides must receive equal attention and consideration.

Black Lives Matter.

Grocery store workers' lives matter.

Old and immunocompromised people's lives matter.

And all the maskless pro-lifers said, in unison, My body, my choice.

I am so tired.

Like a predictable white person, I ran out of energy. 

I was tired of arguing, tired of everything I said being challenged and picked apart.

I read Pride and Prejudice and was instantly swept away into a white world. It was white as snow in here, in this magical world of Victorian literature where race simply didn't exist because everyone in this book was white.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to live without being able to duck into this kind of space. What it would be like to constantly fight for anyone to see you, to understand what you were going through, without questioning.

I began throwing money at stuff.

With few expenses and Zach getting regular "Covid bonuses" at work, I wanted to shuffle the money away from us as soon as possible. I began supporting independent bloggers. I joined the Patreon for Sylvanaqua Farms. I donated to organizations and individuals. I fundraised for farmers startups of young Black people. We gave away our stimulus checks. Maybe if I threw enough money at things, I would feel like I had done something with the year.

The election happened. I watched Biden's acceptance speech and felt despair. Things would be getting back to normal. Normal war, normal imperialism, normal oligarchy. People getting bombed in the Middle East would have a higher chance of being bombed by a woman or person of color. Progress.

The year is waning and I am dragging. My binge-eating is out of control. My eyes are bloodshot from aimlessly scrolling through social media. The Arctic is up for sale and cultural genocide is happening before my eyes. Trump is rushing through federal executions. Our new president looks poised to make some amazing changes, but at its heart, the American government is still an Imperialist power that does not take its citizens' wellbeing into account.

I wrote and called for Breonna Taylor so many times. 

"We will not give up," I wrote.

And then I did.

God is in control, people say as they breathe on me and Zachary.

God is on His throne, people say as they question the statement that Black Lives Matter.

It's important to have church rather than submitting to fear.

God did not give us a spirit of fear, but one of power.

We stopped attending church when it became clear that no one was actually going to wear a mask.

There are two sides of this issue, people said. We must have grace and accept both sides as equally valid, because people's opinions are never going to agree. 

And so the mask-wearers are excluded by default.

Do they know I'm a filthy liberal?

Does it break their heart?

Do they want to return things to normal?

Do I?

~~~

In this year, it's the moments that have saved me.

Bloodroot blossom, a white flower that blooms only one day a year.

Mint tea and a summer sunset.

Sobbing into Zach's neck and feeling his strong arms around me.

Soup made from garden pumpkins and a local farmer's chicken.

Walking in the cold and yelling about how frustrated we are.

Petting our roommate's cat and feeling him purr.

Sitting with God and feeling His comfort.

Holding my newborn niece.

Giving up.

Letting go.

Winter sunsets against the bare trees. 

~~~

So where am I, at the end of 2020? Broken, privileged beyond measure, safe, depressed, employed? Smarting from the scam of accomplishment, the myth of productivity? Trying to hold my fragile self like a baby and say, "Shh, shh?" 

Today I wrote the mayor and attorney general of Louisville, and said, "We will not forget Breonna Taylor."

It was nothing more than screaming into the void, but I have to keep doing it.

~~~

We're doing fine.

We have money in our bank account.

We paid off our car. 

We refinanced our house to a lower interest rate.

We stayed employed, and healthy.

But that's not enough.

It's not enough for us to be fine when people are shoplifting baby formula to keep their children from starving in the richest country on earth.

We're not doing fine. 

But it's not enough to throw up my hands, to "do nothing because I could only do little."

I do a little.

Some days I don't.

I make plans to do more. It's not enough, it never will be.

But I'll keep doing what I think I should do. 

We are not fine. 

But this is the year of embracing Not Fine. This is the year of peeling back the layers and gasping at the raw stinking flesh underneath, festering, unable to heal as long as it's covered.

It's time to shine light on it.

To scrape out the diseased parts. 

To dress and bandage it.

To dream of what healing looks like. 

I want to heal. 

Will you join me?

~~~