A Lament for 2020

Today, my husband and I were talking about Christmas. Specifically, Christmas 2020, and I came to the sudden realization that, for once, it didn’t seem as though we had “just put all the decorations away,” and yet were about to put them back up like it often does in our busy lives. In fact, I could barely remember Christmas 2019. It seemed like another life, or at least another century. Just one more casualty of 2020.

I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of writing, having hardly written at all in the past year. And I’ve got ALL the excuses: 3 kids, the youngest of which turned one a couple of weeks ago and has just tentatively started sleeping through the night; my middle child just *finally* triumphed over potty training after a grueling six month battle; general exhaustion by the end of the evening once the kids are asleep. Definitely too tired to make my thoughts make sense in a meaningful way. 

Then I realized that my biggest hurdle isn’t truly any of these things. It is this: I haven’t really wanted to write. And the more I think about this, the more angry I get about it. Though writing has often been pushed to the back burner in the past 7+ years (because kids), I’ve always had this constant, albeit sometimes low-level, desire to be writing. Months would often go by when I didn’t write a single thing outside signing a form, or writing a grocery list. But the point is I wanted to be doing more, and while this was often a source of frustration, that frustration let me know that I still felt the pull. That I was still an honest-to-God creator of stories. 

But for months now: nothing.

Just another casualty of 2020.

I decided today that this isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that this dumpster fire of a year has stolen so much from me, my family, and billions of people around the world. 

Jobs.

Financial security.

Food security.

School.

Friends.

Community.

Homes.

Well-being.

Compassion.

Empathy.

Lives.

And while it has stolen much, it has also given much.

Fear.

Anxiety.

Hate.

Depression.

Sleepless nights.

Tears. Endless tears.

I told my husband that there was no real reason for me to write my feelings about the last 8 or so months, that plenty of people out there that I agree with had already had their say. What could I add? What did my words matter at the end of another day in 2020?

But there it is again. STEALING my desire, my need, to express myself in the best way I’ve got. So here we go, friends, my Lament for 2020, in no particular order...

Driving by my daughter’s elementary school when it closed down in the spring because of Covid, my chest tight and painful, tears in my eyes and teeth clenched at the unfairness of it all. The playground seeming to sag toward the ground behind padlocked gates. Knowing that it was the right decision to close the schools, but that knowledge not making it one bit less terrible for all the kids.

My 6-year-old daughter getting an invitation to a birthday party in her school folder, and me asking her if this friend had mentioned her birthday party at school. Her reply, ripping my heart to shreds: “Yeah she told me about it, but I told her I couldn’t go because of the virus.” (We had actually decided to let her go, wearing a mask, and the elation on her face when I told her simultaneously further destroyed and mended my heart.)

Visiting our old stomping grounds in a city we used to live in, and driving to an old favorite restaurant only to find empty, bereft windows and a “For Rent” sign on the door.

Hearing our president say we’ve “turned the corner,” and seeing him write “don’t be afraid of Covid; don’t let it dominate your life,” when over 220,000 people no longer have a life to dominate. Watching the infection and death rate in our nation and around the world climb relentlessly, mindlessly, and feeling such ugly rage as I never knew myself capable of, feeling it change me.

Watching Black people murdered by evil people and knowing that many around me don’t think it is evil at all. Wanting to tell the Black community that I weep with them and for them, but not really knowing how.

Celebrating our youngest’s first birthday without dozens of family and friends surrounding her with love and support, feeling guilty that her party was only a fraction of the big, joyous occasions that her older siblings enjoyed. For that matter, hating, hating, that as of September, she’d spent more of her short life in a Covid world than in the world before Covid. 

Feeling simultaneous pride and sadness that our 6-year-old often forgets to remove her mask even after we’re back in the car. Feeling such rage that some grown-ass men and women cannot look beyond the tip of their own nose and wear a piece of cloth that signifies that they not only believe in science, but more importantly, that they care even a speck for others around them.

Hearing on the news that more and more children don’t have enough to eat on a daily basis while some CEO’s are making unimaginable amounts of profit from this pandemic, and hating that there are so many that think they each deserve what they have.

Standing in line for an hour to vote, becoming antsy when others are standing too close, feeling my heart pound and my hands shake as I do one of the only concrete things I have been able to do all year that may make a difference in the future. Wishing I felt more hopeful about the future.

I truly wish this could be the point where this post turns. Where I say, “and yet...”, but not this time. Not this post. Maybe another day.

But I will say this, and I have said it to many over the past several months. Our family has, through the grace of God and circumstance, weathered these harrowing times better than most. We have been financially secure and healthy, which I am inexpressibly thankful for. So this begs the question... if I am feeling this hitherto unimaginable grief, rage, and sadness, what of those who haven’t been as fortunate? This haunts me, plagues me. 

But for today, I dig myself just a bit out of this pit that 2020 has dug for us all and I write with the hope that perhaps I can push a bit of the dirt off you as well. Be safe and stay well, my friends, and know that you are not alone.