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.

From Brasil! X Freaking out about the election

 This is a most useless blog. All the people who used to read me here are my friends on FB and IG. I still miss their blogs and their words, but I'm still connected to some of them. 

Obviously I blog more for me than for anything else, but sending words out into the great void for nobody to read is sad.

In any case, I came to Brasil and threw my mom a really really cute birthday "party" -- with about 10 socially distanced people who came at different times and my brother, his wife, my husband, my son, two of my mom's former students, and my cousin on Zoom. 

I rented and bought pretty decorations and hired a photographer, and later my brother helped pay for all that (not that it was expensive, the dollar [and the Euro for that matter, my brother lives in Finland now] go a long way with the Real, and stuff is cheap here).

The trip and trying to work online are doing a moderately OK job in distracting me from the election, but the truth is that I AM FREAKING OUT! I am very upset, I don't think there's a solution for "Trumpism" and how it's going to destroy America (even if he loses) and how if he is re-elected will simply pave the way for all kinds of injustice and the destruction of democracy.

Even if he loses things will be hard and dire. Sigh... 

I cannot believe he may win. I am so so so traumatized by 2016 that the thought of it happening again is just unbearable. I can't think about it. If it happens, then what? How do we keep on living. 

And we had to put up, in the last two months, with a pastor basically preaching from the pulpit to vote for this trash in the name of religious liberty. So outrageous. 

I wish I could stop being mad at people and what they believe -- IN THE NAME OF RELIGION! Of saving unborn children, of saving individual freedom. Hordes of people brainwashed by Fox News and the lies the religious right constructed to make it possible for Christians to support the most anti-Christian president ever. 

Sigh... 

So much hypocrisy. The Supreme Court. That lady. 

It seems it gets worse and worse every day... I'm only writing this so I can look back on it after the election. I cannot have any hope, however. 

Even if Biden wins, everything is so destroyed it will be hard to put it together. Very hard. I can try to dream he'll win and that Kamala will run in 4 years. We can dream, but how can the dream ever become a reality if in the name of "conservative values" people vote on an IMMORAL man who lies and who has been a con artist all his life? How? How can this be?

In the name of religion and of preserving the country's "whiteness" at all costs -- that ship has sailed, BTW. And I get ANGRY ANGRY ANGRY at latinos voting for him. How? Sigh... just because he's a "macho man" who appeals to their conservatism?

I'm mad at everyone... and this is not healthy, but it's just exhausting. 

Some good quotes from John Pavlovitz

From here (published in 2018): 

It isn't political disagreement, it's divergence on a fundamental level; as people realize they may need to let go of relationships in order to hold on to the deepest contents of their hearts, to be their truest selves, to use their most authentic voices.

From more recently (10/12/20) :

I don’t believe any good people are voting for this president a second time—or they are in complete rebellion against goodness as they do.

I believe that act is fundamentally antithetical to anything good.

Sigh... how will we be able to keep interacting with these people we fundamentally disagree with?

My husband is coming back from Brasil!!

This pandemic has been hard. 

I wish I had been blogging.

I wish I could be journaling the way I did pretty intensively from February and March until May. 

Instead, I waste, throw away, trash HOURS AND HOURS of my "one wild and precious life" (Mary Oliver in "The Summer Day") on my phone. 

And I don't even feel guilty. 

Oh, the stupid gloating & smugness -- it's not as bad as before -- all of the introverts so happy. All the extroverts dying inside.

And the awful, awful realization that the world will never be the same. This absolutely crazily unprecedented experience will change everything forever. 

It's no longer the grief for the lost things... the son's senior year experiences, the husband lost sabbatical months in Denmark, the younger son's lost months in Brazil. 

The wonderful and anticipated trip to Turkey, Greek Islands and London.

The family reunion week in a wonderful beach in Florida. 

The trip to celebrate my mom's 80th birthday (next month). 

Or the family cruise in January 2021.

All cancelled. 

It's no longer the grief for those, it's the grief for what will never be. 

The grief for the near certainty that Democracy in America (and Brasil) will die an ugly death. 

Sigh...

Anyway, my husband returns tomorrow. It was not as hard at all like the 63 days without him, from December 26 to February 27, sigh... but still, I am glad he's coming back. I love him and miss him. 

Yeah... maybe I'll start blogging again? After all, it's been nearly three weeks I now have a desktop computer. I love desktop computers and hate laptops with a vengeance. 

OK, gotta go to bed. Nobody will read this, but still, it feels good to be posting after so long. Micro-blogging at Instagram is not the same. And FB is awful.

A Corona Virus Social Distancing Social Media Pet Peeve: The Smugness

OK, I don't have the courage to write this on Facebook, so I'm taking refuge in my blog! I've been writing updates there regularly because, given our unique circumstances*, our family was directly caught in the disorienting path of this pandemic before most people were.

There are two kinds of smugness I have found quite unbearable on social media (FB and Instagram) lately: the smugness of homeschooling parents (past or present) and that of academics who already work or have lots of experience with online teaching. Sigh... It's quite unconscious, I'm sure, especially the second kind when all they want to do is be helpful to other clueless academics, but it's still not fun to encounter either one. ETA: there is a third kind! The smugness of those who already work from home! :-(

I no longer have young(er) kids and the one year in which we "cyber-schooled" precisely ten years ago was AWFUL. My youngest is currently doing online school, but he works independently all the time and all I have to do is to proofread essays. In spite of that, I cringe reading some comments of folks who have lots of experience with this because it sounds like they're almost "bragging" that their lives haven't changed a bit! Sigh...

It's more complicated with the distance learning academics because it's good to have some support, but I still feel like I'm being "preached to" or something. I can't really explain too much, it's more a gut feeling. It's kind of funny because most of the academic friends I have on FB are all former bloggers, some of whom might even still be reading this blog -- most aren't! That's why I'm writing here.

ETA: This is not nice, but all of you introverts out there are also very very smug saying that this is your dream come true and stuff. Come on, do you just want to make extroverts feel mad at you and feel worse? ;-P

In any case, here is my short rant (edited twice now). I hope I get some comments!!

*My husband was spending his sabbatical in Denmark, came to the U.S. for two weeks for a conference which was promptly canceled (Ah! The blissful ignorance we experienced two weeks ago cannot be ever recaptured!). Then we traveled to Colorado (and I now regret that) to come home to news that I'd be teaching online and that Denmark was closing its borders and the whole country. My husband remains here. Now our son's boarding school in Brazil is being kind of cancelled and he's there with my elderly parents, so we are very apprehensive about that too!