Limping to the finish of 2020: 5 (6) takeaways
/This cold December 28th evening finds me prostrate on a couch drinking a really subpar wine and researching seed stratification. Seed stratification and also scarification are fascinating methods of readying seeds for planting when they’ve not had the benefit of overwintering in nature and/or need help germinating due to tough shells. However, I fear such learning will go the way of so much this year, and that is into the cavernous holding pen known as Maybe Later. Also in said pen are Ulysses, the annotated read-along guide for Ulysses, various spices, and a fuckload of yeast. I miss having time, you know? Not Covid time which, in my home, is interminable no-flow time largely spent managing, feeding, answering, cleaning, and “No, I’m on the clock right now” ing. In the Before, there was just time. Time to walk with K, time to be alone in my house, probably working on behalf of it but with the quiet needed to let my mind really wander and process, uninterrupted, time to refill my tank.
The moral of this intro is that I ordered 3” plant versions of the seeds I was investigating, poured out the shitty wine, decided not to stop my still-working husband from still working despite it having been nearly 12 hours since he started working, eyed the annotated Ulysses mere feet from my grasp, and told Ol he could watch another episode of Parks & Rec. Because that’s where things stand at nearly 8p in the nearly 10th month of the Since. We’re all stuck in the pen just doing our best. I mean, I taught my parents Pinterest via FaceTime yesterday, for chrissakes. That seems like some sort of supra-achievement worthy of 3” plants versus seeds that need to be cold stratified.
The years since 11/8/16 have, in many ways and at many times, felt like a slow descent into some Atwoodian hellscape. That Cheeto Satan’s term was capped with a year in which John Lewis and RBG died + Covid is an end I couldn’t have conjured, but here we are. And as we limp to the last flames of the 2020 pyre (that is hopefully just for the GOP and not all of America), I want to share a few takeaways.
Live big. If this year has taught us anything, it’s to enjoy the moment. Of course you should save and be responsible and all that jazz, but shit. Be yourself. Your truest self. Drink the special wine. Now. Learn the language, start the business, wear the short skirt, go back to school, move, travel, follow YOUR dreams, read and think and form educated opinions and then stand up for them, proudly, with a fighting spirit but not a closed-minded one.
Grow the seeds you birth, adopt, or get to help raise. Listen y’all, my kids annoy the sanity out of me sometimes, not least since we live together 24-7 these days. But also, they are each a bit of magic, unique quilts of genes and history and experience and juju that I get to raise and turn out. I can say that with real zen, even though I considered self-defenestration yesterday, because I am so lucky to get to work with other people’s bits of magic all the time. Seeing others’ kids with non-parental eyes is the greatest lesson in appreciating people for WHO they are. Beyond the things that can and maybe should be worked on, people aren’t individual buffets. Each is a fixed menu. Love them for the courses they arrived with, even when suggesting they sub parsley for cilantro. Unless they’re tacos. Certain things aren’t substitutable, nor should they be.
Be generous. With time. With your spirit. I maintain that other than working in a garden, there is no better way to feel good and improve this world than to give. In small ways, in financial ones, with your time, with your skills, go share, be kind, and be supportive.
Demand what you are worth. Share, but don’t give yourself away; not your time, not your talents, not the respect you deserve. I don’t work for free unless I’ve chosen to do so. And if someone treats me like poo more than once or without explanation, I bid them adieu.
Take/make time for what you need. Put your time where your heart is. Yes, we all have responsibilities that both demand time and funk out our hearts. But beyond commitments, are you investing in yourself? I am not here to tell you that a hot bath one time is going to soothe your anxiety away. IMO, that’s ridiculous, annoying, and invalidating to the harried lives most of us are living. BUT, are you refusing to put everything in the pen? I hope so. I am trying mightily to do this, even though Ulysses and his annotated friend taunt me on the regular. I am paying attention to myself, and I will continue to do so.
WW84 was an abominable film, not least as it followed the terrific Wonder Woman. Don’t watch this movie. Save yourself.
Tomorrow, my paternal grandmother turns 95. NINETY-FIVE. And she is still smoking, breaking rules, getting her hair styled weekly, refusing to go out in less than what I, at this point, consider evening wear, and telling me about a northern lights cruise she will take in the near future. Do we agree on many things? We do not. But I cannot tell you she’s done anything but live life, and I have got to admire her stallion-like spirit. I also suspect she will not see WW84, for a variety of reasons.
Thank you for bearing with the musings of a tired, peevish, sick-of-almost-everything Em. Here’s to an even marginally-functional 2021.
