The Winter of Our Discontent
I took a break from posting blog entries. The holidays came and went. I have worked to make a blog with content that is upbeat/positive/uplifting. And lately, I have struggled with that, especially in writing. I have started and stopped countless entries, with intent to return to them when I can make them better, make them happier. It’s not that I don’t feel happy or joyful or any of those things, but winter is a tough time for me. I am grouchy, angry, short-tempered, sad. And this winter has had special challenges. On Christmas Eve, a disc ruptured in my lumbar spine, and this has been difficult for me, more difficult than I have been willing to admit to anyone, even myself. The elliptical machine my husband gifted me for Christmas is calling my name, but I can only use it in short spurts right now. The spring, summer, and fall five mile walks that I so enjoyed, solo or with my good friend Brittany, feel like they have been robbed from me. And I know that sounds dramatic. It’s not, though. I hate the winter with a deep and profound loathing I struggle to put into words.
I mentioned in a previous blog post that I took a test and a subsequent course about how different activities make different people happy. The number one source of joy in my life, the one that makes my soul celebrate, is seeing and being in the presence of beauty. And the gray and dead and brown and dull of an Indiana winter, no matter how mild or severe, does not make my heart happy. I have tried to shift my perspective, to see the beauty. I know it must be there. But I am blind to it. I like to see snow, but not for long. And when the charm of the holiday season disappears, I feel a rising anxiety from deep inside of me as the long and dark remainder of the winter sets in. I know psychologists refer to this as Seasonal Affective Disorder. I do all of the things I know I am supposed to. I take Vitamin D. I sit in front of a sun lamp. I take my prescribed medication. I pray. I meditate. I reach out to people I love and people who love me. I am gentle with myself. I loved our Christmas ladder so much that I switched out the decorations for pink and purple and made it a “Valentine’s Ladder” (I don’t even like Valentine’s Day), because I know I need to create beauty to look at where I can. Part of getting through this is the reminder that this time comes every year, and I know it will pass. The winter solstice feels like a halftime event. The days will get longer, but the wait—oh, the wait. My body needs sunshine and warmth like it needs air. I miss the summer. I miss the ocean. I miss the sun. I miss the sound of the cicadas and crickets on evenings spent on my porch with my husband and our dogs. I miss the lightness in my heart, the closeness I so easily feel to the Creative Force at work in our daily lives when the natural world is rising up to the occasion of meeting my standards for what is beautiful.
I do everything I know I am supposed to do, and I do it zealously, religiously, and the result is this—barely, gut-wrenchingly scraping by with my face above the water, waiting, knowing spring will come, one day at a time.
Doubly challenging is the fact that I miss so much right now, so much of my LIFE, so much of the normal ways I wade through this part of the winter every other year. I miss sitting in the rocking chair in my Grandma’s living room laughing with her. I miss watching a movie with my mom. I miss heading to my husband’s family farm with all of his siblings’ families and the noisiness of the whole herd of nieces and nephews chasing each other through kickball games and four-wheeler rides. I miss weekends spent out of town with my dad and Amy and my sisters. I miss date nights with my husband that include us being anywhere except on our couch. I miss visits to museums and girls’ nights at the Vincennes Brewing Company. I miss my Monday night ladies, you know who you are. I miss going to the gym, losing myself for an hour on the Cybex machine or the rowing machine while I binge watch a show to pass the time. I miss swimming laps, waterproof headphones in, with the sun setting and the underwater floodlights illuminating the world underneath the water. I miss my students. I miss being in the classroom, laughing together, learning together, reading and discussing together. We have made it work on Zoom, but it is NOT the same. How I miss students I have never actually laid eyes on in person is beyond me, but teaching is second nature to me. I am alive in a classroom with my students, part of a living organism that is real LEARNING in a group setting. It is not there on Zoom. I miss having a house full of my daughter’s teenage friends annoying me by talking too loud and laughing at tv shows that aren’t funny. I miss my massage clients.
But then came yesterday.
Yesterday was a day—one of THOSE days—one where I woke up feeling a little more naked and vulnerable and exposed than usual. Maybe it was the inauguration. Maybe it was getting my second dose of the COVID vaccine. Maybe it was the way I could not get comfortable because my back is especially sore and tender right now. Maybe it was the end of my menstrual cycle. Maybe it was all of these things or none of these things. Who knows? But I woke up fragile.
And here is a list of things that made me cry yesterday:
Joe Biden getting sworn in as president
Kamala Harris getting sworn in as vice-president
The sight of Michelle and Barack Obama
George W. Bush laughing with Michelle Obama
My dog Leo looking at me with his head cocked to one side
Amanda Gorman’s poem
Getting my second dose of the COVID vaccine
Acupuncture giving me a much needed break from the pain in my hips and back
A really good nap
A new student emailing me to tell me she loved the first day of my Zoom class and that it was a bright spot in her day
The story of the Capitol policeman who stopped the rioters and has now been promoted
My dog Frankie giving me one of her epic Frankie hugs
The YouTube video of Sister Act 2’s “Oh Happy Day” portrayed as the 2021 election
Reading Amanda Gorman’s poem again
A photo of my friend’s adorable new baby
Wishing Miyu was still here with us
A post of a friend’s students of color celebrating the inauguration
Re-watching Kamala Harris getting sworn in as the first ever woman to be vice-president
Driving around the corner of 10th and Broadway and missing my Monday night ladies
The thought of going to the pool in two weeks
A video I took at my favorite beach over the summer
My sweet friend offering to bring me a fancy coffee
Amanda Gorman’s cute videos with her mom on Instagram
My husband taking care of the meal I made in the crockpot, so I didn’t have to
Lady Gaga singing the National Anthem
Joe Biden’s inauguration speech
Knowing the basic civil rights of people I love are safer than they have been for the last four years
Missing my sisters and nephew and niece
The Vampire Weekend song “Harmony Hall” (this one was a surprise, and I don’t know why it happened)
So yeah…yesterday was just one of THOSE days. And I will have them here and there, and they happen more in the winter months, especially between January and March. But these days when life feels like I have had to send my heart out into the world unprotected are also the ones that somehow make the cold and dark and loneliness of the winter a little less bitey, a little less likely to devour me and spit me out.
I wrote a long post recently on social media about how I loved the year 2020. And I did. I meant that. So many wonderful, beautiful opportunities and experiences have been granted to me and my family as a result of this pandemic. And I have felt racked with guilt for saying it, for admitting it. I saw post after post on the internet about what a terrible year 2020 had been, and I got it. I understood. But…I just couldn’t agree.
My family had been through the most challenging six months of our lives as we rolled into March, 2020. We had been through two sudden and tragic deaths in my husband's family, battled a family crisis I still can't even bring myself to talk about publicly, all had Influenza A, sold our house, then found out in the forty-eight hours before we were set to move out that the rental house we were scheduled to move into had fallen through, and we had to find somewhere to move with our teenager, our foreign exchange student, and two dogs (and for anyone who has ever tried to rent in this town, you know how tall of an order a house that will accommodate all of these people and pets is). My husband and I were pep-talking each other almost daily--"Come on. We've got this. Team Quinn." We had agreed that we just had to get moved in to the house we found in the eleventh hour on moving day, get settled, and we would finally be able to breathe at last, that spring was around the corner. The long winter was finally ending.
And then the pandemic. My husband decided to leave his job when they told the employees that they weren't shutting down until 25% of them tested positive for COVID. We went through the normal feelings--bone crushing fear, depression, restlessness, insecurity, worry, anger, and on and on and on. And then the tornado (that supposedly wasn't a tornado) hit. We went without electricity for days in this huge old house, looking for a generator, and during all of this, I was adjusting to teaching online, our exchange student was trying to decide to stay in America or return to Japan, and our daughter was working to finish her senior year of high school via internet. It was a lot. A whole whole whole whole lot. And I know I, for one, nearly broke.
But then I didn't. Little spots of light began creeping in. My husband worked hard to lift me up and help me cope. The girls adjusted. And 2020 turned around for us. We were gifted with new opportunities and situations we would never have had if it had not been for the pandemic. We eased into a "new normal," and we turned our fear and our worries over and walked forward in faith and love and surrender, and here is the truth--
We had an amazing year. 2020 was beautiful and wonderful for my family, full of lessons we could not have learned any other way, and full of humility and wonder. We were fully aware of our privilege and of the very real challenges and tragedy others, even others close to us, were experiencing. The truth is that we were lucky. We were able to make the best of 2020, and it worked in our favor...and that was luck. There are other times in life when we have not been as lucky, as fortunate. And I have felt such guilt at the thought of admitting my real feelings about 2020 when so many have endured and suffered so much. But I also feel called to be honest with how I feel. I spent most of my life avoiding that kind of honesty, with myself and others, so I feel a sense of responsibility not to do that here.
In the first month of 2021, 400,000 people have died from a disease none of us had even heard of as we cruised into 2020 last year. And the time between then and now has been…interesting. But reflecting on the year that was 2020 is a good reminder for me about 2021. It’s going to shape up to be whatever it is going to be. We will lose people. We will face challenges. My husband and I are building a small house on his family’s farm, which is wonderful and exciting, but also extremely stressful. My daughter is planning, yet again, to move to Jacksonville, Florida to start college, and the nest I’ve made and tended for the last nineteen years will be metaphorically empty, and I will need to find new ways to fill it. I’m faced with job insecurity at my teaching position in addition to the normal winter blues. So much is unknown.
But after a day like yesterday, I’m reminded of love and gratitude and the excitement of the unknown. We have a new presidential administration in the White House. I have been fully vaccinated for the deadly disease of COVID. The sun came up. The world spun round. We all put one foot in front of the other. I have an amazing husband, and our marriage works well because both of us are pretty sure we got the better end of the proverbial deal when we met. We are a team, even on those days when we are both being nuisance-ey and people-ey, and our humanity is glaring. I have a beautiful, talented daughter who is a young woman now, following her dreams, navigating the world with more wisdom and authenticity than I ever had at her age and with a willingness to lead with her heart out in front of her in a way I still can’t always find the nerve to do. I have the best friends anyone could possibly want. My family is awesome. Life is good, even though, every year, winter tries to lie to me.
Winter tries to drown me, but winter forgets that I LOVE to swim. I prefer to do the butterfly stroke-graceful, sleek, powerful, fluid, elegant, fast. But sometimes I’m stuck in the backstroke, unable to see where I’m going, waiting at any moment for my head to hit the wall, constantly having to get my bearings by glancing around to mark where the lane lines are, trying to move in a straight line, avoiding getting water up my nose. I have never been a strong backstroker. I have always hated swimming that stroke. But even backstroke has carried me from one end of the pool to the other. And I always finished my race.
And luckily, life is more like the Individual Medley…sometimes backstroke, sometimes butterfly stroke, sometimes breaststroke, sometimes freestyle…and then it starts again. Back, butter, breast, free. Winter, spring, summer, fall. And despite never being much of a backstroker, I have always been a hell of an individual medley swimmer.
