The COVID Diaries: I miss my housekeeper.

I miss my housekeeper. I suppose most people do. Especially those with kids or coinhabitants who don't pitch in. But that's not why I miss my housekeeper. Laura and I are neat to a fault and eager to do mindless cleaning chores that give us a mental break. Our house is as clean and organized as it always is. There is no change there.
The change is that I don't get to see Jacinta once a week. I don't get to joke with her about the weather or ask about her daughter and grandson and their latest adventures. I don't get to visually verify that she is okay and the world is going on as it does. I don't have the luxury of knowing someone even more OCD than me is taking care of me, sorting my shoes by size and color and aligning them perfectly in my closet after sweeping and mopping the floor underneath them. I don't get to share these small, concrete, daily decencies with someone I've known for nine years.
I lost some of my best friends this year. That brought home how much these small decencies change us for the better, and how shocking and demoralizing it can be when you know one node of your decency exchange network has winked out of service. It feels like your back is exposed.
Today I miss my housekeeper because my back is a little more exposed.
One day soon I know my wife will head to the healthcare frontlines. We are each other's biggest stars. For that node to wink out would irrevocably cripple our network. That is the worst-case scenario, that one of us will leave the other alone to keep fighting for humanity, half-mauled. The thing is that this worst-case scenario is always true. No virus or war changes it. It is always the worst-case threat. Maybe just a little more probable in the next year than average. It doesn't change our resolve. If it did, it would fundamentally change who we are. We are the ones that help. We are the ones that put those small decencies first and above all else. We take care of ourselves, so we can take of each other. If this network does go down, if one of us winks out, then our web of love is gonna sparkle the holy shit out of the darkest night first.
It isn't heroism, or even courage, that fuels this resolve. It is desperation to keep alive the only thing we have learned endures beyond all deaths: compassion.
Compassion is the thing that has compelled us to socially isolate from our families so that Laura cannot possibly carry any illness into the ICU, and so that Laura can stay healthy enough to work when her colleagues are first up and first ill. Compassion will compel us to isolate from each other as soon as she treats her first patient--so I stay unexposed long enough to care for her when she acquires it and we don't burden resources simultaneously. Compassion compels us to think ahead and figure out what we need to do today to ensure we can perform some small, daily decencies tomorrow and maybe the day after too, if possible. Compassion compels us to pay attention to the small decencies we have today: the kiss over a cup of tea one brings the other, the hug in the laundry room between loads, and the virtual happy hour with our family that we still get to have sitting next to one another, for now.
Maybe compassion is courage.

My favorite coffee cup at work. I miss that too. Maybe compassion is courage.

Dear Dandelion, a poem to my inner child

Dandelion, don't be lazy.
Why are your eyes so hazy?
Powder Puff,
your hair should be crazy.
Don't let 'em tell you otherwise.
Fighting your nature only causes cries.
Every word is just a way to say something still comes next,
so keep your look alive.
Endings are written all the time,
without actually reaching The End.

Dandelion, don't be dull.
Isn't your heart still full?
Long Stalk,
you could bend to the bull not to break.
Don't let 'em tell you otherwise.
Thinking you have to give up for the good is a greater sink,
than trading over your battleship. 

Dandelion, don't reign in,
Got your breath of hope?
Sunshine,
let float!
You can tell them otherwise.
Whatever you water
goes and grows.

Taraxacum is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae, which consists of species commonly known as dandelions. 

X outliers unite!

I believe that generational typologies are about as prescriptive as horoscopes, and well, horoscopes take advantage of the Barnum Effect (click the link and look it up, you'll be better for it). As a consequence, I've never worried too much about the Generation X archetype I could be assigned to.

Academics have in turn argued that our generational experience has made us everything from apathetic slackers with tortured latchkey childhoods to silent and brilliant entrepreneurs who could save the world from braggadocious Boomers and credit-eager Millenials. The truth is all of that. In every generation, there are slackers and hard workers, apathy and action, hope and cynicism.

The only outlier about being among those born between 1965 and 1980, the only truly unique experience of our generation is that we have never at any point in our lifetime been the majority. There was always a generational population running society bigger than ours (either older or younger or both at once). Because of aging effects, we have also never yet been the minority generation (the oldest generation has always been the minority so far).

If there is anything unique about Gen X, it is that we don't know what it is like to be the majority or the minority. 

We know what it is like to perpetually be the middle kid--always in training, never in power, but responsible for everyone younger still. Middle management.  Not a hero, but not a victim either. All of the work, none of the credit, and none of the celebrated potential that goes along with being the young prodigies.

X marks the middle spot, an outlier by it's sheer perpetual, stuck in the middleness. 

My advice? (And you know I have some or I wouldn't be writing this.) Live it up, Gen X. No one really gives a shit what we think--let's use our outlier middleness to make that more a blessing of absolute freedom than a curse of our generational existence. As the middle kid, we can probably get away with some pretty outrageous peace deals. Let the Boomers borrow our Chuck Taylors, teach them how great it is to not wear pants to work and convince them it was their great idea all along. Mentor those millennials through having a meaningful career and finding work-life balance while knowing most of them will never be promoted or convincingly rewarded for their hard work. Remind Gen Z that reality TV started out as a documentary called "The Real World" and involved artists who couldn't make a living having to tolerate each other's cereal habits...every freaking morning, without a smartphone for distraction. We can show everyone what the middle is like...not knowing who you are or what you want, but usually knowing this isn't it. Whatever. Shrug. No one gives a shit!

Vive le milieu! It isn't mediocre, it's the only living extreme in generational existence right now. 

A reunion of X outliers.

US Census Bureau. (June 4, 2019). Resident population in the United States in 2017, by generation (in millions) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved January 31, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/797321/us-population-by-generation/ 

Do and hope?

One of my matriarchal family lines (Caldwell-Tatum) has a centuries-old family motto:

Do and hope. Fac Et Spera. 

A lot can be read into these three simple words, even without the fancy armored arm waving a sword through a crown crest that goes along with them. As a kid and then a young woman I was drawn to the words hope and do individually, and in that order. I pictured noble ancestors hoping for a better life for themselves, their family, their country and doing the work, adventuring, rebelling, immigrating, bootlegging, and learning to make those hopes happen. I took heart in my naive hopes of saving the world and dared to tilt at windmills and bang my head into brick walls of bureaucracy and apathy. I even rallied others at times vicariously with my off-gassing of hope and determination. Hoping and doing was initially a very satisfying mantra or motto, and then I discovered I had it backward.

I'm now arguably middle-aged and have suffered through obtaining three degrees and a host of traumatic experiences in extreme environments where I could literally do nothing and the worst outcome was hopelessly inevitable. As a consequence of my jobs, I necessarily do a lot of observing only (e.g. job analysis, teamwork assessment, organizational research, executive coaching). There was nothing I could do to prevent a detective from being shot to death during my ride-along or put life back into the many broken and defeated bodies I followed first responders to, or bring back an astronaut or faculty member I had worked with after a tragic incident, or to help a healthcare professional or veteran actually get past the repeating memory of a gruesome trauma. There was nothing I could do that had any hope of saving two of my best friends from a boat fire or my dog from drowning or my in-laws from a long, slow, scary cognitive decline, or young family members from being exploited and disparaged into self-destructive behaviors. There is certainly nothing I can do that has any obvious or immediate hope of stopping deadly wars, natural disasters, famines, greed, or ignorance. Living has made it abundantly clear that waiting on hope to inspire me to do is completely hopeless.

Hope feeds on the fumes of doing, not the other way around. Sitting in the bulletproof back of that police cruiser while one detective struggled to drag his partner out of the line of fire, I thought of things I could do to better select and train officers to survive and to support their families and colleagues when they did not. When the horror was over, I set about doing those things as much as possible and convincing others to pay attention to doing them too; and I found the hope to do more from there. I've learned that the doing must come first or my hope will certainly die. I must do in order to feed my future hope.

I still read a lot into those three words. I cling to them in their exact order now, do and hope. They save me from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They remind me that if I wait to hope, I may never do what is really necessary or actually helpful again. I do the best I can to change what I can for the better while I can with what I have and hope that makes my own or someone else's adventure living a little easier or better from that point on. I do, and I make mistakes or sometimes I just end up doing the wrong thing, but then I do something else or something differently next time, knowing that I will probably learn something that has an even better hope of influencing lives. I write and hope it will speak to what someone else needs at some point in time when they most need it, but I do not wait until I feel hopeful someone would like to read it before I write it. I certainly do not wait to write until I have hopes of achieving success (whatever that is). I write and hope I can revise it to be even better later as I learn. I do, then I hope, and that is how my next day always dawns beautiful and clean and full of purpose now.

Do and hope.

Artifacts

Sunlight on broken glass inside your empty house
Is as jagged as the uncertainty
Nagging at my belly.
Are you gone?
You must be.
There are only dust motes and ghosts of your intentions
Here near your teacups drying in the kitchen.
I study the upside-down enameled mug,
The one with the rainbow kitten on it,
That Adrian bought in Prague,
And the empty silicon manatee tea-infuser,
We gave her for Christmas,
Both gutted like me.
Every artifact spells out you were just here.
You planned to reappear.
Andrew’s notes above the desk outline two more years.
That picture of my uncle cock-eyed is on the magnet editing board,
Amongst the parrot from Costa Rica, a Joshua tree,
And those two of Adrian reading in a red dress by the waterfall.
Why those, all old, I wonder.
A battered wet-suit is draped over the chair on the patio
That smells faint,
Mostly of, the sea.
A book from that bookstore in San Diego
That you loved
Rests on each bedside table.
A regency romance for Adrian,
A comedic fantasy novel for Andrew,
But both bookmarked
Only a few pages in.
I can’t quite remember,
Are these books from the list I recommended to you,
Or among the ones you recommended to me?
Are voracious readers really allowed to die,
So ephemerally?
The stained-glass penguin window Laura crafted for you
Is still in a crate, as are your framed family photos,
In the one room that you still haven’t unpacked.
There are sheets on the new mattress you both complained about hauling
Into the upstairs guestroom,
Waiting for some of us to visit.
Maybe us next, or maybe Angela,
Or Kathryn and Levi with a toddler in tow.
Adrian was already worried about the Thanksgiving menu
Meeting everyone’s needs.
Andrew’s voice still echoes in my head,
Our last phone call,
“You and Laura should come. It’s only a three-day dive trip.”
I wished, but we had a wedding to attend.
“Ah well, we’ll do it again in November or April. We can have a Google hangout next week to figure it out.”
But we won’t.
You are perpetually out?
That isn’t what these artifacts say.
These trails of you evidence so many things
We have left to do
And the hopes still in count.
How do I reconcile
These artifacts
With the evidence
Of your absence?

Artifacts