Tag: nostalgia

Coming to Terms With It All

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I thought I was handling this entire COVID-19 shut down thing fairly well. I finished the CSLI year one fellowship program in fine style. I’ve read twenty-two books, so far, and next week I’ll complete reading the Bible from cover to cover in ninety days. My family built and planted a garden, installed a Little Free Library in the front yard, and has plans for both bees and chickens. I’ve been doing Keto and have lost about twenty pounds, all while working and managing kids, both in school and during the rudderless summer days.

Don’t get me wrong; I have my down days, too. And there have been more of them than not lately. Being forced to stay in first gear for a few months has given me ample time to consider the fact that 142,000 people have died, often scared and alone. I’ve had to spend even more time coming to terms with the deep racial issues in this country as well the plight of people groups like the Uyghurs in China. I’ve watched as protestors in Portland have been abducted off the street, wondering what it means for our right to peacefully protest both now and in the future. I’ve listened as people tangle themselves in knots arguing against wearing a mask in public rather than simply choosing to love their neighbors by doing so and even witnessed a woman have a nervous breakdown in real time thanks to the glittering magic of social media.

Yeah, it’s been rough to say the least. However, I’m doing all this from a very privileged position. Both my husband and I are working from home, and our kids have space to continue schooling here as well. We have a solid internet connection, devices for everyone in the house, food on the table, and anything else that we need to be successful in these very strange times. But even with all that, it’s been difficult to keep my head above water some days. I cannot imagine how folks who have lost jobs or are trying to figure out childcare for the coming school year are managing.

But I haven’t cried over the last few months. Not even once. No matter how overwhelmed I’ve been or how sad I’ve felt, not a single tear has fallen from my eye. But then the dadgum Clydesdales came on.

I’ve been watching my team, the St. Louis Cardinals, play intersquad matches to get ready for the 60-game season starting at the end of this month, and since there are no commercials, the broadcast fills the time between half innings with great moments in Cardinals history, live shots of fans from around the park last season, and so forth. At least once a game, they show the horses pulling the Budweiser cart around the warning track, an Opening Day tradition in St. Louis going back to 1933 and the repeal of Prohibition. Every year, they announce this moment with great fanfare; even the players stop what they’re doing to watch the team of eight horses, along with two green-clad drivers and a Dalmatian complete a few laps around the stadium while the organist plays “Here Comes the King” and fans clap along. I look forward to seeing it (often on TV and once in person) every year. That procession meant baseball had come back and signaled the true beginning of summer for me.

But we didn’t get it this year. We haven’t gotten a lot of things. Maybe we’ll never get them again. It’s hard to say when the world seems to flip over every twenty-four hours. For the most part, I’m glad for the changes. I’m happy people have had to slow down and spend more time with their families. I’m beyond thrilled that the environment is healing because of a decrease in transportation and shipping. I think the BLM movement got a huge boost in visibility because things like baseball and bars and brunches weren’t there to distract us, to serve as a kind of Soma that numbed us to the reality of the world. Yet, still I grieve because life as we know it has unquestionably changed forever. I was able to keep a lid on it, to process everything that meant academically and logically, until I saw those massive hooves high stepping and shining ribbons flowing in the popcorn scented air.

One time while I was watching, a haiku by Kobayashi Issa came to mind:

This dewdrop world –
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet…

The poem expresses a Buddhist concept, one that espouses the world is in some sense an illusion (the word for it is maya). Like water rolling in an unknown direction on a leaf, the world is full of causes and effects, a web of choices and changes we cannot control. The dewdrop world is a dewdrop world. But that final line from Issa changes everything. Yes, the world may be somehow illusory, but that doesn’t mean it’s without longing or sorrow or tragedy. Those emotions as well as ones like joy, love, and peace are all part of the story we’re living.

Watching those horses trot was my “And yet, and yet…” moment. I can’t stop the bad things that are happening around me. I can’t even fully protect the good things I have or the people I love. I know that, but seeing a moment that has been part of my life for forty-plus years, something that brought me joy, and having it suddenly feel like an old newsreel was unsettling. I felt the sadness of the present moment in stark contrast to the simple joys of yesterday, and the difference was breathtaking. It cracked me wide open and mixed up all the thoughts and emotions I’d managed to keep neatly compartmentalized. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or bad—maybe it’s both—but I’m leaving space for it, allowing myself to feel it rather than move along to the next thing on the ol’ to do list because as Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (KJV).

The Rainbow Connection

jamieahughes5 Comments

As a proud member of the small but mighty, idiosyncratic group of people called Generation X, I’m a middle child of history. Unlike my cousin, a child who’s always had the Internet, handheld video games, instant downloads, and GPS, I remember life before technology. I remember VCRs, answering machines, and being my parents’ remote control. I remember the method by which we would contact each other in high school, without the aid of cell phones and texting,  if our plans went awry at the last minute. (Remember phone trees and cruising?) If pressed, I could still locate data and create a research paper without the help of a computer. I liked waiting on pictures to be developed to see what I’d captured. I enjoy actually buying CDs to read the liner notes and experience the CD visually as well as aurally. I honestly miss getting letters in the mail.

Suffice it to say, sometimes the world that is opened by the Internet is something that can, at times, cause me to marvel. For instance, with The Herscher Project, my online writing group, I am what I consider to be good friends with a good many people I have never met. In fact, the group’s founder, James Bowers, and I have had many discussions about writing and life in general, and I have confided things to him that I reserve only for friends. I’ve never physically laid eyes on the man, but he’s part of my inner circle despite that fact.

Facebook, despite its many faults and its tendency to brainwash anyone using it who’s under the age of eighteen, has allowed me to connect with people from all the schools I’ve loved and lost in my long journey as a Wal-Mart refugee child. People I’d thought I’d utterly lost track of now inform me about their children’s daily victories and the fun up-and-coming events in their lives with the click of a mouse. It’s like watching a scrapbook being made digitally.

The same goes for this blog. I’ve had people visit here to read my two cents on a given matter, and many interesting things have happened as a result–some positive, others less so. I’ve begun to read the thoughts of others, too. For example, I enjoy the blog Francopolis, written by Michael Franco, a fellow English teacher who is slogging through life like I am, trying to do the best he can with what he has. I root for him, identify with him, and give him support when I leave comments. All this with a man I’m never likely to meet! However, I think my life would be far less rich without knowing he’s out there.

I love the posts from Lovely Shades of Nostalgia written by a young lady who, like me, takes joy in things that aren’t technological. Yes, I see the irony in using technology to write about what technology is missing, but that’s part of the joy, too. Kids like my cousin, those who don’t remember the absolute, make-your-colon-want-to-explode excitement that came over you when The Grinch Who Stole Christmas came one (because it only aired once each Christmas season, not on demand or on DVD) or just how cool having a pen pal in Brazil can be, can read her blog about “the good old days” and understand a little more about a world they never knew existed.

One of my favorite blogs is Accidental Stepmom, a hilarious look at life raising five stepkids when you never expected to have any yourself. The author, J.M. Randolph, is an honest and altogether awesome quirky gal who manages everything with humor and a wry wit that never fails to amuse. I look forward to her updates, and although she and I are fairly dissimilar in lifestyle and ideology, I have found a kindred spirit in her, someone I can look to and learn from.

Here’s where the Kermit playing the banjo bit comes in.

Last week, she had a “photo caption” contest on her blog, and I entered it. You can read all about it here. Well, my caption won first prize, which happily happens to be a $10 gift card to Starbucks. I received it in the mail yesterday, and it even came with a lovely note!

I now have something written in her handwriting, something from this amazing person I might never meet in the flesh but who I know well through the thoughts and stories she takes time to share online. In it, she tells me about her passion for stationary and how she buys too much of it, knowing she can never use it all. The same irrational need to buy it comes over me when I’m in a bookstore. She informed me that she’s been to my new town, Atlanta, and remembers it fondly when the show she was working for played the Fabulous Fox Theater. Most of all, she thanked me for a laugh, something that cost me nothing to provide and gave me great joy to do.

This connection, the exchange of information and happiness, would have been impossible without the technology we have available to us today. While I shun a great many technological trappings such as Twitter because it is impossible to have any meaningful conversation in fewer than 140 characters, I still marvel at things like blogs and vlogs that allow people who might never have otherwise know the other existed the chance to say hello, exchange information, and even send an artifact or two to one another to make that connection tangible. That’s what makes it so amazing to the lovers, the dreamers, and me.