18th Blogging Anniversary, Empty-Nesting, Deaths, and Being American during a Global Pandemic

18 years ago in a month minus one day... I posted a photo of my baby and I. 

This baby is gone off to college now, we're officially empty-nesters. 😱😮

I think I'm handling it well. In a way, it was harder when two years ago we left his older brother in college, on the very day my husband's grandmother died (of COVID, BTW, but she was 94 and declining).

(long digression below)

I wrote elsewhere that on the day she left us, her oldest grandchild, born in her own house of her firstborn daughter, left her very first great-grandchild in college.

So many kinds of grieving in one short day, with more to come -- in the funeral the next day, we were blindsided watching on Zoom when my father-in-law's ashes (he died in 2016) were placed to rest next to his mother-in-law (they were really close). When my  MIL bought the cemetery plot a couple of days before her mom's death, this had been arranged and planned, but she forgot to tell us, so when we saw it happen without any warning, it was quite devastating and my husband cried and grieved for his dad all over again. It was a painful, but meaningful closure for my MIL. In a few days my husband flew to Brazil to spend 3 weeks with his mom while he taught his online

A month later my mom's oldest brother, as old as K's grandma, died suddenly and, since my  mom was turning 80 (and my dad 83), I decided to go spend three weeks with them as well, as I continued to teach online. 

Blessings in disguise, silver linings, if you will, of the global pandemic. And I was never so thankful for my American passport as in that moment! I could board an empty plane, walk out into an empty airport in the country of my first nationality, spend three weeks with my parents, and come back home on another empty aircraft, land in empty airports, with all their stores locked up with no problem. 

The home of the free, the land of the brave. Never was that more clear to me than during the pandemic. Unlike my Canadian brother- and sister-in-law who were stuck and couldn't even see friends, I was free to go because I was an American. (and life was pretty normal here in the rural area where we live, at least in the second half of 2020. Our kids' private school and private university were also in person -- although the college experience of my older son was not being great, but I shall not blog about that).

It took a global pandemic to reconcile me to my new nationality and -- perhaps? -- identity. 

The "in-betweeness" of this blog's still valid masthead is still my life. 

(end digression, I think it wasn't too bad, was it?)

I started blogging in the days of early motherhood. I had a baby and a toddler and blogging changed my life. I met new people, I was exposed to so many new ideas, I came out of my "bubble" so to speak.

I all but abandoned it in the past 10 years, never even blogged when I perhaps most needed it (the pandemic), but maybe being an empty-nester, who goes every school year day to teach "kids that could be my own kids" (this will end in 4 years and I am TERRIFIED of that -- how will I be able to teach when all my students will be younger than my kids, and I'll keep getting older and older and them younger and younger?? 

The past 18 years were pretty incredible. I have nothing to complain about. I do have a charmed, privileged life and I am thankful for every single thing in it. Even for this abandoned blog. It was such a great and important part of the past years. Maybe I'll come back and blog more? Especially when I have a pile of grading that I'm trying to avoid! 😆

The 9/11 Babies Were the Class of 2020 - 9/11 21 years later and the pandemic

It took me 20 years to finally watch the Naudet brothers' 9/11 documentary. I saw it on YouTube.  

No wonder I didn't really know much about it when it aired on TV, CBS aired it on March 10, 2002. 

My oldest son was born on March 9, 2002.

And here, I will begin with a digression, which should be a post in and of itself, but I cannot say I'm a blogger anymore, so it will go here. I shared this thought on Facebook a few times, but writing stuff on FB is not the same as writing a blog post (and don't get me started on how frustrating the internet is nowadays with the stupid social media that is no substitute to what we had with blogging).*

Yes, The 9/11 Babies (in utero or newborns) were the Class of 2020

They experienced trauma before they were born when we were stressed out by all that was going on, and then, they had their graduation and first year of college experiences taken from them. I know because my poor son is still recovering from those traumas. Sigh... 

And all of a sudden, all that I wanted to say had kind of vanished from my head. COVID brain? :-(

As I was saying, I saw the 9/11 documentary film today. The one in which the two French-American brothers follow Engine 7/ Ladder 1/ Battalion 2 Firehouse. The one in which miraculously every single last one of the firefighters survives!!! I wanted to hear from each of them 21 years later. 

Why did it take me so long? I don't really know the answer to this question. 

I just wrote a super long comment in my friend Jamie's blog post in which I realized that maybe I could have blogged throughout the whole pandemic and tried to rebuild the fantastic community I write about the footnote below. Instead I journaled (A LOT), started reconnecting with friends over Zoom (heck, we even watched my husband's grandmother's funeral on Zoom, what a year! I also saw weddings on Facebook and Zoom) and I spent a lot of time on stupid Instagram and Facebook. Sigh... 

The Zoom meetings are still going strong over 2 years later -- it was incredible, really fantastic to connect with college friends who were like family, and seeing one another every Friday night has become a need. 

OK, I've lost steam. I need to go work out, something we also gained with the pandemic, starting in January 2021, we do the workouts of Caroline Girvan, an Irishwoman who is incredible. I hope she keeps on posting videos for us! At 51, lifting weights and exercising is a need, and essential to our health and well being.

In any case... I do think it was a missed opportunity, not blogging during the pandemic. OTOH... yeah... I don't know if it's still relevant. In spite of that, I'll hit publish. ;-P

* And the Millennial Influencers and YouTubers imagining that they are the first to create community online, don't they know that before they were making their videos and interacting with viewers we had blogs and actually made virtual friends online? We created many kinds of communities which were very important to us (for me it was especially interacting with other academic mothers, people who, like me, were raising babies and writing PhD dissertations). I met between 10-15 of these other bloggers in person, I am still on FB just so I can be in marginal touch with them. Sigh... What do these 30 somethings know of what we (15-20 years older) did 15 years ago online? OK, rant over.

2021

 OK, so I didn't blog at all in 2021... so it's like the year didn't exist, right? [facepalm]

BTW, I have 3 students writing an exam (it's a class of 12, but 9 of them have asked to take the exam online the way it was last semester). So... I am not only getting back into blogging, but I'm doing something I've literally never ever done, which is blogging from work. From inside my classroom. It feels I'm engaging in incredibly risky behavior. LOL So funny! And obviously there is something I should be doing -- finishing writing my own self-evaluation because I'm the "chair" of the peer eval committee of the NTT faculty in my department and we are meeting tonight, and I obviously didn't submit my eval papers which were due last Friday. :-P

But, back to 2021. I wrote an Instagram/FB post in early January with 10 photos as a review of the year, so because I'm lazy, I'll copy it here (with some minor edits, I can't resist):

2021 — What we did because of what we couldn’t do

The Year in Review

2021 was the year of trying to do alternative things to kind of “make up” for all that was missed both in 2020 and 2021 itself. 

 

In late June, we visited San Francisco (shortly after things “opened” there which was nice!), did two hikes in Yosemite National Park, and visited friends and their super cute boys in Sacramento area + Lake Tahoe…

 

… because we couldn’t go to Turkey, cruise the Greek Islands, and visit London — neither in 2020, when first scheduled, nor in 2021. (We have no idea whether we’ll get to do it in 2022).

 

We visited Brazil twice (in July and December) because my parents are elderly and time with them is precious, and we saw my brother and family again after two years (3 years for Kle & Kel).

 

We spent a week with my husband’s family at the beach in Florida in July because we missed it in 2020, and then, in the week between Xmas & New Years’s (after a spectacular brunch offered by my mother-in-law’s cousins), we spent some days at a hotel in Brazil with my MIL, two brothers-in-law’s families, and aunts and cousins & families…

 

… because we missed a full family + extended family Caribbean cruise in January 2021, my parents (and maybe brother) would have gone too — this one won’t ever happen. [insert crying emojis here]

 

I know that, in spite of everything we had a wonderful year, and work-wise it was definitely way better than 2020, but still… life isn’t the same and will never be, and we are all still grieving. As you can see, the focus shifted strongly to our nuclear and extended family and to relationships rather than places and things, because people matter most. Children grow, grandparents grow old and, eventually, out of existence (we lost my husband’s grandmother to COVID, and several friends also died in 2020 & 21.)

 

P.S. In 2021 K & I also celebrated our 50th birthdays, bought a house, sold the other and moved. It was a busy year!

 ~   ~   ~   ~  ~

So this is the summarized version and it's missing SO MUCH. One thing I'm super proud of (and then a bit sad too, I'll explain), is that in January 2021, my husband and I, at the prompting of my "Canadian" sister-in-law (she's actually Brazilian, but we call them "Canadians" to differentiate them from the "Koreans" and the Marylanders ;-) --> where my other two BILs and families live) we started working out using an YouTuber's workouts -- her name is Caroline Girvan, she's from Ireland and she's crazy, but we love the workouts. 

 

We basically worked out (with weights and other contraptions, such as bands and yoga blocks) 5-6 times a week through the whole year until October when we bought the new house and our lives became utterly chaotic. And, after the move in late November, I developed painful and "chronic" tennis elbow in my right arm, which only began to heal now in late January and early February when I started taking massive doses of turmeric and... drum-roll! ... started working out again, yes, lifting weights. My arm is so much better!! I guess I needed to strengthen all the surrounding arm muscles for my elbow muscles to heal. I still have localized pain on the outside of the elbow, but nothing like I was experiencing before (I felt pain even when sleeping!). 

--> wow, now the "Aging (Strongly & Gracefully)" label I created I don't know when makes perfect sense. YAY!

OK, I need to do some work, so I'll hit publish. I have so so so many words in me and I definitely need to go back to blogging. I know there aren't many of you out there, but I will enjoy interacting with whoever is still around.

It's been so long...

     ETA: I did not blog once, not even ONCE in 2021! That is so so sad. 

... I don't even know how to write a blog post anymore. 

The cell phone has truly ruined a lot of things in my life, and the first and foremost was blogging. When the blogger app stopped being updated and I couldn't write blog posts from the phone and I needed to use the browser to read any blogs was the beginning of the end. I basically stopped coming to my beloved blog and reading the blogs of friends who kept on blogging. 

I started following people on Instagram instead and using stupid Facebook more -- particularly to keep in touch with all the people whose blogs I loved to read. Sigh...

Blogging changed my life, but those years are long gone. The very world is different from those "glory years" of blogging from 2004-2010. I feel very sad coming here and writing this "lame" post. All people care for now are good looking images and photos (Instagram style). Of short tweets -- but my ADHD makes it impossible for me to be on Twitter, it's too overwhelming. If I can't keep track of the posts I can't handle it. And with ads and tons of retweets it's way too much, I stopped trying to be on Twitter years ago. 

And it's sad because at least one of my remaining blogging friends, Jamie, uses twitter and shares her latest posts there. OK, I am actually writing this to procrastinate finishing two exams that I need to print/ copy, and edit online for Wednesday. Sigh... It's dark outside and I'm still in my office. 

But deep down, I miss blogging something fierce. It just doesn't make much sense to continue when the community that existed here is gone. I feel old and out of place in the digital world when 17 years ago I felt I was in the forefront. Oh well, that's life. 

P.S. The second half of 2021 was crazy - we bought a new house, prepared the old one to sell (hardest thing we've done in a long time, moved out in a slow, drawn out process, and sold our house of over ten years. We don't ever think about it, or miss it, it's like those 10 years are way in the past. Isn't that crazy?)

OMG, I miss writing so much. I should come back. Maybe I will.