Get Up, Carry On, Don’t be Smashed: Thoughts on Holidays during a Global Pandemic

Divorce and death seem especially piercing on holidays. I don’t know why.

Certainly global pandemics and worldwide quarantines don’t help matters. In fact, they do quite a bit of piercing themselves.

It’s something to ponder while I sit here on this rainy morning, drinking my cappuccino with its whipped foam. I’m surrounded by pink peeps and Cadbury eggs, which of course makes me think of new life, babies, and things piercing their own way out of the cold hard earth of winter. Tender, fragile at first, but also strong as oak trees, which they are growing into over time… with enough rain and sunshine.

It also makes me think of how my marriage was a lot like a peep: it looked pretty on the outside but the inside was a sticky toxic gooey mess. Which I suppose I need to remember when I’m feeling forlorn, that no amount of pink sugar can cover up the poison that comes a marriage built on lies.

Sigh.

At least my cappuccino is divine—every sip feels like falling in love.

I try to focus on the magic of the kids and me, the three of us and I try not to think that one of us is missing.

I have heard that a triangle, a polygon with three edges and vertices, is the most stable physical shape and so is widely used in construction and engineering.

I like that. I’m going to think of the three of us as the most stable structure.

Also, in many cultures, three is a sacred number. The moon goes dark for three days, and in the Christian Easter tradition, it was three days after Christ was killed that he came back to life. From death comes life. After winter comes spring. Out of the soil of grief comes something new and magnificent. It’s new and that’s why you feel lost—because you don’t know what’s coming. You are creating a new path.

It is the holy trinity, the triple goddess, the trimurti (Hinduism) and triple Bodhi (Buddhism), good and bad things come in threes, three strikes and you’re out, three little pigs, three bears, three coins in the fountain, plant-animal-mineral, three pyramids of giza, three musketeers and three amigos…I could go on and on.

And yet, if I’m completely honest with myself, there were piercing moments on Easter where three little words popped into my head, yelling for my attention. And they weren’t “I love you”. There were:

I feel lost.

And I don’t know how to find my way.

I had a vision of my heart yesterday and it wasn’t swirly pink and bursting with rainbows like it should have been. It was battered and forlorn, like an old lighthouse that’s seen too many storms. I have various tactics for dealing with the swamp of sadness, and so I put on my earphones and went jogging on the beach by myself in the sunshine and I felt jubilant and joyful, so joyful I ended up being one of those weirdos you see “dance-jogging” down the street to music you can’t hear. I love those weirdos. I am one of those weirdos.

Joseph Campbell says that if you can see the path before you clearly, it isn’t your path, it’s someone else’s. Your own path you make with every step. Maybe that’s why I feel lost.

Anyway, I came home from my dance-jog and my teenagers were eating breakfast. I pulled out the book I gave my daughter last week for her 16^th birthday. It’s an extraordinary book, very simple, short, profound and beautiful. It’s called “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy.

When my children were little, I spent most of their mealtimes reading to them book after book. We spent a lot of time at our local libraries. It’s been a while since I read to them while they ate, but I plunged in over the protests of my 16-year-old daughter and as soon as I started they both were instantly quiet, just like when they were little. In it, the boy echoes my own feelings.

“Sometimes I feel lost,” said the boy.

“Me too.” Said the mole, “but we love you, and love brings you home.”

“What is the bravest thing you’ve ever said?” asked the boy.

“Help,” said the horse…

“When have you been at your strongest?” asked the boy.

“When I dared to show my weakness. Asking for help isn’t giving up,” said the horse. “It’s refusing to give up.”

“When big things feel out of control… focus on what you love right under your nose.”

I think most of us can agree that big things feel out of control right now.

 “Don’t measure how valuable you are by the way you are treated.”

It was after reading this line that I unexpectedly burst into tears. My kids jumped off their barstools and ran around the counter to hug me as I cried.

“Tears fall for a reason and they are your strength, not weakness.”

If tears are strength, than I am the freaking Rock. (Sidenote, I had a dream about The Rock last night.)

My 13- year-old son, Henry said, “I don’t think this book is for kids. This book is REALLY deep.”

Which made us all laugh.

Then Henry said, “If I was a character in this book, I’d be the mole because I love cake.”

There’s a wise mole character in the book, who keeps trying to bring cake to his friends, but eats the cakes before he can gift them.

Every sentence in the book is amazing, but the next line, I really wanted the kids to hear right now, but now I think maybe the person who needed to hear it the most was me.

“Always remember you matter, you’re important and you are loved, and you bring to this world things no one else can.”

I try to remember this, but it’s not easy. I’m going to write it down and tape it on my mirror as a reminder. It seems maybe everyone could use this reminder right now, so I have written it here, on my blog, as a reminder for you.

Every single person brings things to the world that no one else can. Only you have walked in your shoes.

Only me, was raised in a Mormon community by Mexican witches, moved to Hollywood and lived with my soulmate and best friend, danced onstage for years for thousands of people, worked with terminally ill children, traveled around the world with no money and landed at Harvard at the age of 32, leading me to marriage and magical children, and what I thought was my fairy tale, only to have my marriage implode and my soulmate/best friend decide to leave the planet early…

And here I am, a single mom who needs to find a job during a global pandemic who has been home with my children for the last 16 years and who’s previous work experience includes circus acrobatics, belly dancing and gogo dancing, leaving me with absolutely no idea what kind of job I might be qualified for… unless someone wants to pay me for my current talent of rolling off my very deep and delicious Lovesac couch—which requires more strength and flexibility than you might think. And I’m getting Olympic level practice at this skill during this quarantine.

Only me has walked this walk. (At least, I think it’s only me—if any of the rest of you have a life that has followed this trajectory I want to hear about it.)

And there is one more very important reminder in the book:

“Sometimes just getting up and carrying on is brave and magnificent.”

Hemingway said the same thing with different words, equally beautiful:

“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.”

So there you go, two things to focus on today: get up and carry on… and don’t be smashed by the world.

Pierce away Holidays! Pierce away global pandemic!

I’m up, I’m carrying on, and I won’t be smashed.