Dear Easter, 2021

Dear Easter, 2021:

Ring the bells, Alleluia, He is Risen. Buy the suits for the boys, the fresh socks and stiff shoes. New ties and a crisp shirt. You will search imploringly at four or five stores at the Mall on the day before Easter with distant salespeople who are tired, eyes glazed over: To them, Easter is just another holiday where there are more clothes to put back on racks, more stuffed animals to stack. It will run together for you, too. You will stress over the meal: the guests, the house: it will come and go, and you will have forgotten what happened last year: how the being in being together was the real Alleluia. And how precious it was.

Don’t forget what it feels like: this blessed permission of 2020: permission to “make do” with what we have, to “be with” what is. To leave the shopping list shorter because so much is non-essential.

This year, I bought the meal in one, safe swirl through Kuby’s in Snider Plaza: the shopping strip of my Middle School years. We stood in line, 6 feet apart, my friend and me. We were quiet in line, no one chatted on phones or texted: there was silence in our togetherness: common humanity calls for a humble solidarity. No one complained that the line moved at tortoise speed. We were grateful the store was open.

I moved through the small, lovely German market as old as I am. Pimento cheese, asparagus, twice-baked potatoes, ribs, smoked pork chops for my parents, cheese grits (Grandmother reference), pickled okra (Grandfather reference) and Cherry Strudel for breakfast (Dad reference). I stood on one side of a recently constructed plexiglass screen: to protect me and the woman at the register. In 2020, we are together in our division: together in staying distant, mutually committed to staying well, and understanding how deeply serious the reasons really are.

In the car, we decided to drive on out to the farm: storm clouds dropped lightning and we watched runners darting for home. I paid attention to it all. The outings are special now. It rained most of the way.

At Campbell Road I wished I was still exiting there for work: for the office I can’t sit in at the University of Texas at Dallas. Soon, I say to myself, soon. We press on. The rain lets up. Once on Parker Road, I tell Emilia I could make that drive with my eyes closed: So. Many. Drives. On East Parker Road. The curves are in me. And especially today. I notice.  

In my Parents’ driveway, the gravel crackles under the car. I sort out their provisions and walk up to the front door: everything is different in 2020: even how I enter our family home. I ring the large white plastic doorbell that replaced a bell I brought back from San Gimignano, Italy in 1992. The new bell is louder.

Slowly my father peers out of the window of this ca. 1910 Farmhouse: one that has most certainly seen Pandemic before. He opens the door: “I need to go get my mask”. He takes the groceries without gloves on, with one long forefinger. I walked in, gloved and masked. My mother unnaturally retreats when she sees me: part surprise at my arrival, part not knowing exactly who and what to fear. I witness reason over wanting, sensibility over the human habit of embracing your parents at exactly the moment you really need to the most. We stood uncomfortably: it is all unnatural. Front door, not taking a seat in the warm kitchen I love so much. Lunch spread on the table. But I had to go. Air molecules were wafting off of me and from whom or where no one knows. Gently I took my elbow and touched her elbow. His, too. Blue eyes piercing me with love. I felt it.

I scurried to the car. Don’t forget next year, this little moment. How you wanted to hug them, take them home with you. To the messy house with food you’re not going to cook. To the four home offices you all set up in three rooms: feeling the house shrink around you. In 2021, make it the "us" you wanted it to be: in the clothes we felt like wearing, knowing that being together is the one thing we couldn't have.

Next year, God-willing: may "we" and "it" all come together. Plan an Easter day that is unplanned: unscripted and new: shift the unbalanced time of planning versus being in the opposite direction: because, when you don’t have either, it is the being you want the most. You will want to sit in your parents’ kitchen for hours. To run in the back door like you always did, unannounced, un-masked. Did I actually ring the doorbell to my parents’ home?

Wake up to all of this and know that in a Pandemic, with fear and uncertainty all around us, it is the waking up that is the real Alleluia. And for this, Thanks be to God.

Love, Me 

Dreading Monday? Shine your Little Light

Anyone dreading Monday? Read on and breathe 

Weekends are now the hallowed space: 5 pm Friday comes and I breathe a sigh of relief. Weekends are a little different than they were before, but for those of us managing the remote office and home schooling, Monday-Friday 9-5 are a LOT different. And, for those of us not home schooling they are a lot different, too. 

Today is Sunday and I see the crest of time in the horizon before I am back in “gear”: to be “on” for our museum team, prepared for my new online classes for UTD Employees and a wee bit ahead of my children’s plans to turn on Fortnight between online instruction. I could say it’s frantic and a mess, and I am choosing not to. Because how it is in our house, office, school is a choice. 

So, here are a few words from the home front that I hope will be helpful to you as we peer into Week Four of shelter-in-place. 

Declare how it will be: take five minutes and write about this week. Set your timer and keep the hand moving (this is a free write, pen and paper). Create a vision for what will be. You will surprise yourself how, once you’ve written it, the future can be what you see, not what happens to you. 

Cut your screen time in half. I’m doing this today: as much as I love the nearer-connection of Zoom, Teams and Webex (and promoted it last week), I am also noticing eye strain. Are you? By Friday of last week I was putting on my awful readers and leaning too far into my laptop. Our boys’ eyes were reddening too. I’m sure it’s part pollen, part Fortnight, part social media (for me) but we all know, this is new, and there is a limit. Listen to the side effects. Your body is telling you something. 

Be the boss. The calendar doesn’t run you. You run the calendar. Look out this week and take off what isn’t directly advancing your work. I know I need “think space” in next week and I found from last week I accepted all meeting requests and moved meetings to make it all “work”. We’re missing drive time, prep time, de-brief meeting time, desk time and breathe time. We, as the authors of this new world of Remote Work, get to say what the day looks like. 

Lift up the laptop. For that ½ of the week you are designing on zoom, the center of the screen should be at eye-level. Your neck might be telling you this, too. (See “listen to the side effects above). Chair yoga is a great anti-dote to your new neckaches. 

Love yourself. Take a nap when you’re tired (children permitting). Take a mindful self-compassion moment: 

1. Sit in a position that is comfortable for you: no straining, holding. Relaxed, yet alert. 
2. Lower or close the eyes. 
3. Place the palm of your hand gently over your heart space. 
4. Create a prayer/ phrase or mantra (a word or phrase to aid concentration) to say to yourself. Examples: “breathing in, breathing out” (Thich Nhat Hanh), “this, too” (Tara Brach) or I am here, Everything will be alright, Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). 

I believe we’re leading two lives right now: 

•    There is the Self managing all of the suffering we are seeing and may already be experiencing directly. We are grieving the loss of our innocence and the old normal. 
•    There is the Self managing our Shelters: creating a new normal, keeping the work and school work flowing. Holding it all together, or as it goes for me: trying to. 

And guess what? Both lives show up in one perfectly imperfect human. Give yourself permission to be with both: talk to a friend or family member about how you are in this fourth week. Write about it. Hold yourself in a space of allowing yourself to try things, fail and forgive. Two things I know: we’re all in this together, and we may be at this for a while. Shine on, Dear Friends. 

Post script: 

For the past six years, I have worked with Dorrier Underwood on how to lead in my work and in my being. I source their expertise here both in designing meeting and fulfilling goals. Additionally, my training in yoga and mindfulness have helped prepare me for this moment…and the moments to come.