THANKFUL FRIDAY

For the last few weeks, my Instagram and Facebook feeds have been filled with pictures of graduations. I have scrolled through pictures of old high school friends celebrating their child’s graduation from high school, some even from college. There is a woman in the blogging community who I have followed since her oldest was a baby and she just this week posted pictures of that baby graduating high school. My heart swelled up for the young man and if I could do so without making it weird, I’d reach out and tell that woman she’s doing an amazing job at parenting.

The Saturday after Quinn’s graduation, Traci and I were floating in the pool conversing on how hard it is to encourage young people to do anything right now. This was not a complaint about young people today or rant of “in my time…” We both agreed that it is so hard to encourage young people because of the dumpster fire of a world we’re sending them into. We’re telling them to go to college so they can get a good job when so many of those jobs require so much more than a college degree. We’re sending them out there with our visions of the American dream of having a good job with health benefits and home ownership when the average cost of a home is unaffordable. Between the effects that climate change is having on food sources and human displacement, plagues, hate crimes and book bans, this world looks a little bit more like the dystopian fantasy worlds of Octavia Butler every day. It’s real difficult to tell a kid to be true to themselves when governments are making it illegal for them to do that.

People really struggle with the concept of inclusion and keep confusing it with indoctrination.

I recently finished watching A Small Light, which tells the story of Miep Gies and the role she played in helping to hide the Frank’s from the Nazis during the occupation of Amsterdam. Miep and her husband Jan played vital roles in not only hiding the Franks, but in smuggling Jewish children out of the city and into safe foster homes. We all know what happens to the Franks in this story. Otto Frank was the only survivor. One of the things that truly spoke to me in this story was how Miep continuously under played her role in saving the people she saved. In her mind, all she did was a keep a secret, but the reality is she kept a secret and managed to procure food for eight people with rations all while avoiding the gestapo. Years later, when she would speak to groups of her experience and the Franks, she would end her talk with this:

But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room. -Miep Gies

In spite of how sad and depressing it was to watch this series, it gave me hope. The rise in hate crimes and government bans on anyone not cis-white is evidence that history tends to repeat itself. If and when the time comes, I am prepared to hide and keep people safe, but in the meantime, I am grateful for the sea of new graduates that I see in my social media feeds. Because in each one of them, I see their potential. I can see them thriving and succeeding. I can see them doing more than turning on a small light. I can see them turning on so many lights, making a room so bright we all have to squint at the magnificence of it. Now, this is not to say that we should just dump all the work onto theses young people. Far from it. What I am saying is that it is nice to have a new wave of help in flipping on some light switches.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I had a rib out. I visited my chiropractor this week for a routine maintenance and she discovered my bottom rib was not where it was supposed to be. I told her that my left wrist hurt when ever I was in plank and my right ankle hurt every time I pressed into child’s pose. I don’t know what part of my body surprised her the most, the misaligned rib or the sound my ankle made when she put it back into place. I left my chiropractor feeling different. I hadn’t even noticed the whole rib thing so there’s no telling how long that’s been wonky, but I did notice the difference it made to have it back in place. I like things in order. I am at ease when things are in order. Tiddy, straight orderly lines are soothing. This is my weighted blanket and why I love roaming the isles of the Container Store. When my surroundings become too clutter and messy, I get real testy. Turns out the same is true when my body is out of place.

This week has been a full and busy week, but not in bad way. Mask mandates have been lifted at work for all who are fully vaccinated and all of us scientists tentatively took off our masks. Then we all grinned at each other because many of us had not seen each other’s faces outside of a Zoom meeting in well over a year. There has been an obvious lifting of the strain we have all been carrying on our shoulders since all of this started. Some of us, including me, have been face to face with all of the COVID data on a daily basis for over a year. Every day, I watched the numbers of deaths steadily increasing while at the same time I watched a portion of the general public ignore all guidelines. It did not take long to see the correlation between the two and the feeling of hopelessness to settle in. As scientists, we walked around with the weight of all of that data. As we suspected, vaccinations are turning all of this around and we can relax a little. I will still be wearing a mask at the grocery store and in crowded areas. If I am not feeling well, I will be wearing a mask in public. This should have been our general norm even before COVID.

I have received some real good hugs in the last few days. I’m talking about the kind of hugs that make you sigh with relief, the kind of hug that melts the tension in your body. Seeing the smiling faces of my coworkers and dear friends, being able to hug those dear friends, all of this makes me feel more hopeful than I have in a long time.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

A hazy shade of winter

5 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "A hazy shade of winter"

There is a small, yet heavy, package sitting on my cedar chest in the dining room. That box contains a new batter for my scooter. Michael ordered it ages ago when he realized that my old battery would no longer hold a charge. He asked me when was the last time I replaced that battery and I said “never.” My scooter is almost eleven years old. We haven’t even bothered to open the box of the new battery. It just sits there, very much like a doorstop, and reminds me that eventually it is going to stop snowing and the temperatures are going to become tolerable. I told Michael the other day that I was going to ride my scooter so dang much, that I was even going to ride it in the rain. I got caught in the rain while riding my scooter more times last year than I ever have since buying it. At this point, I’d welcome any scooter ride, rain or shine.

Winter time Thankful Fridays tend to center around hope. It is the time of year where I have to dig the deepest to find those little things that give me some kind of hope that I will make it through another winter. Typing that makes me realize that finding hope and really believing in that hope has become a difficult thing for me to do. There have been too many times when hope has lead to great disappointment. There have been too many times when hope had to be abandoned to make room for the acceptance of loss. The concept of hope for me has become almost mythical. It is believing in fairies and unicorns and even moose. Yet it is hope of something better that keeps us going and I can be passive in my hope or active. Right now, I am in the process of actively fueling hope. I’m planning museum trips. I’m getting on my mat. I’m wearing my favorite blue boots that I can only wear in the winter time because they keep my feet super toasty.

I don’t need hope to know that winter will eventually end. Michael just bought a snow blower, so that is probably a good sign that we’ve seen the last of the snow. I do need to hope for something better to keep me moving through these last grueling weeks of winter though. I am thankful for the things in my life that fuel that hope like those brief moments of sunshine, the break between snow storms, and that box holding a new scooter battery.