First, I Made A Wish

Lit Salon: A triptych of defiant hope

My first pandemic birthday, with shortcake

The last time I felt this scared, despondent, and paralyzed by uncertainty was in March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic was shutting down Minnesota and the rest of the world.

Like everyone, I was terrified.

All my teaching and speaking engagements were abruptly cancelled, the security of my job at the University was uncertain, and my husband’s employer announced a mandatory furlough. I didn’t know what to do.

Lots of other people were losing even more. It felt so unspeakably cruel that as we feared for our lives and the lives of our loved ones, so many were also losing their entire livelihoods. I remember reaching out to my online community to offer free help with cover letters for anyone who was out of work, just because it felt good to do something, anything.

Maybe it was because of how writing those cover letters helped my heart that I took one more step, and created a writing workshop for “survival strategies for staying creative through uncertain times.” Back then, my creative writing program (which had offered mostly in-person workshops and retreats) was still called Elephant Rock—but in that pandemic crisis I named the brandnew workshop “Writing in the Dark.”

Here’s a screenshot of the Facebook post where I announced it:

Needless to say, it took off immediately and has been evolving (and growing!) ever since. And while nothing was solved by May 2020, even once that Writing in the Dark workshop was up and running, I was seeing hues of brightness I hadn’t expected:

I share this now to remind myself—and you, if you need it—that we’ve all gotten through some really hard things before, and recently, too. Which means we’re strong, but we’re tired. So I’m not going to yammer on about how lotus flowers grow only in mud and the phoenix is reborn from its own ashes after being consumed by flames and caterpillars must first break down into a "soup" before transforming into a butterflies.

A lot of us—including me—just aren’t in the mood for those kinds of pep talks. Not yet. We’re still softening into the pain, fear, and, yes, anger of this moment. Which brings me to one of my favorite Pema Chödrön quotes:

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.”

In this spirit, I offer you a triptych of defiant hope from my journals of early 2020, right before and during the early pandemic.

xo

Jeannine

January, 2020

Want to hear a crazy story? When I was an undergrad in college on a Pell grant, I decided to study Latin because I did not fulfill the University of Minnesota's requirement of having completed two years of a high school language, and I did not want to start a language at the beginning for no credit. That seemed so unfair to me. But taking a classic language like Latin got me out of it.

The University of Minnesota is a huge school, and back in the ‘80s it was also mostly a commuter school. Lots of students lived off campus, including me—my apartment was a couple of miles away, an obvious obstacle when it came to those eight o’clock classes (especially in winter!). Besides, I was already in the bad habit, from my rough experience in high school, of skipping class as often as I could as long as I could still pull of As. And that's how I rolled in my eight o’clock, Monday through Friday Latin class. I mostly showed up for quiz days.

Again, this was back when most classes at the U of MN took place in giant lecture halls and the dismal graduation rate was on the verge of legislative intervention. However, my Latin class was actually quite small, and it was clear, even to me, that my poor attendance was noticed. Still, before I could even devote much worry to that problem, I had a new one: my quiz scores came back clearly revealing my stunning ignorance of the Latin language. My Latin instructor gently took me aside and suggested that if I attended class regularly, my scores would probably go up.

I gave it a try.

By the end of the quarter, I had an A going, which I maintained until I dropped out of college during my second year to get married and have a baby, thus ending of my career as a scholar of Latin forever.

Fast forward more than 30 years to a bitter Wednesday night in January. I'm at the Swedish Institute giving a reading with a lovely group of other writers, poets, and musicians protesting the climate war against the earth. At the end of the program, as everyone milled about celebrating the hopeful, fiery energy of the evening, a man approached, hesitantly, and asked if I had been a student at the U in the 1980s.

"I was your Latin teacher," he said.

I couldn't believe it.

How could he remember me, an undergrad dropout, three decades later?

“I’ve seen your writing in local magazines over the years,” he said. “I kind of figured you'd do something other than Latin."

I reminded him how I’d been a Latin truant, how he'd given me some straight talk that made a difference. He didn't remember that part (or so he said). But we both remembered each other. And that's the magnificent power of teaching and learning and human interaction—the profound and lasting effect we have on each other, even through minor exchanges over relatively short periods of time.

It turns out, people really do care about each other. We do. It gives me something like hope, or solace.

April 2020

My quarantine birthday was weird. It was cloudy and it was sunny and the wind blew and it snowed and it was sunny. It was the wake of the full moon. I was extremely crabby. I spent several hours on and off cutting my little dog's hair with a scissors because she had gotten too long and matted. I was exhausted. Jon valiantly avoided arguing with me no matter how hard I tried, and I tried very hard. A dear friend sent cupcakes! Billie and Tao made a batch of knockout spring rolls, even though they, too, were crabby and tired. I made them paint the attic stairwell and they did it and pretended not to be annoyed. I made my favorite NYT take-out style sesame noodles and they turned out better than ever. Dinner was beautiful and we ate ravenously and realized we'd mostly forgotten to eat all day which is probably part of why everyone was glum. We got less glum. Everyone told me true things that made me feel better about myself. Like, how pushy and unrelenting I am about honest and clear communication and life being short and striving and being our best selves, doing our best things, building our best lives, even when we're failing all the time, and how much they appreciate that even though it's usually incredibly annoying while I am doing it. They said they were grateful for how annoying I am, and that felt really true. Before the day was over I was able to FaceTime with all of the kids and granddaughters. The two-year-old sang me happy birthday on a video and I cried. Before her bedtime, I was able to tell her a running story we've been building together for more than a year, one she loves, about searching for the moon. Telling her this story is the best way I've found to stay connected with her over FaceTime. Even better than the moon story was the moment when she told me she had made me a birthday present outside, and I asked if maybe it was mud, and she laughed and laughed. This was a turning point. There is nothing better than making her laugh. I made strawberry shortcake with my favorite poundcake recipe and real whipped cream. Billie made my plate as beautiful as it could be, and put a candle on it. We all ate a giant amount of this shortcake.

First, though, I made a wish.

May 2020

The world is heavy, so heavy it's cognitively dissonant on a beautiful day like today when the sun is shining and I'm walking with Jon, gawking at all of the stubborn blooming that does not know better than to burst open with such unapologetic joy.

Here’s something else like that, something defiant and anomalous.

It happened today, after a mighty riptide of exhaustion pulled me under today (I've been working double time to plan my new class and to compensate for lost income, etc., etc., etc.). Plus some really difficult writing at the University this week, because the topic is so complex. Also, Jon and I have been staying up late these days, since he doesn't have to get up at five in the morning anymore, with quarantine, so we can lounge around in bed together till nearly eight every morning if we feel like it. Late nights have become a simple pleasure.

Anyway, I got so tired today today that I needed to close my eyes for a little minute. I slipped quietly out of my office into our bedroom next door. Now, this was the tired-for-real kind of tired. I actually burrowed all the way under the covers. But before I slept, I heard Jon's footsteps on the stairs, then in the hallway outside our bedroom, then outside my office door next to our bedroom, and as I listened to him move in the hall, I noticed my hip, waist, back, and shoulder lighting up, that warm buzzy feeling right before he touches me. I could feel Jon's handprints.

At that moment exactly, Jon laughed out loud in the office because he realized I had gone to bed (my ability to nap really bowls him over). He came in and put his hands on my hip, back, shoulder. And I realized my body doesn't know the world is in a crisis, not entirely. My brain knows, but my body was doing what bodies do, other than the business of staying alive, which is to keep loving and wanting love. Like Mary Oliver says.

I needed to fall into the sweetness of what the body understands best, kind of like I need to love this moment when the leaves and petals unfurl in spite of, or in defiance of, this magnitude of sadness.

PS If you would like to keep creating through uncertainty, please join us now for Writing in the Dark’s The Art of the Scene intensive. We would love to write with you in our safe, light-filled community.