I sent my kids to school today.
Because there was a terrorist threat on social media, what is (finally) unremarkable, sending the kids to school, became a conscious choice.
My twelve year-old, who isn’t on TikTok and didn’t know that every kid was “supposed” to be afraid to go to school, casually mentioned her fears about atomic war as the bus screeched over the hill at dawn.
She disappeared into the next stage of her heroine's journey before I had a chance to respond. She stepped into a day that, thanks to a terrorist with a smartphone, is not just another day.
My friend, a teacher, texted about how scared her colleagues were to go to work.
She’s at school now and half her class is out today. But that might just mean that there’s another virus going around. And because we live in the age of Corona, that is remarkable in an entirely new way.
My husband, an engineer, was nearly speechless with stress as he tried to recreate plans for machines when global supply shortages mean they can’t get most of the parts they need.
He’s working from home in our dining room and trying to track down simple bits of plastic and metal from China and across the planet, sweating and swearing as he’s constantly forced to redesign components and redesign his days based on an endless chain of uncertainties.
My seven-year old collected bits of quartz from the driveway on the way to her bus.
For once, my mystical, anxiety-prone child didn’t seem to have a care in the world.
And then, my dear ones launched into the day, I walked around the edges of our land where the half-green lawn meets the brambles and the brush, and I held them all in my heart and sent prayers to all the gods I can believe in to keep them safe and sane.
I return here, to the page, and write through all my optimism, all my fear, all my helplessness, and all my devotion to what is mine to do.
Much of my story has already been written. It is not the story of a scientist who takes on a virus that has paralyzed the globe, a political leader who takes on endemic violence that has terrorized our society, a teacher who takes on every social problem while they try to teach kids to read, nor an engineer who keeps building the stuff that builds our economy.
We are all living our own stories that may or not take us to any of these front lines.
I am a writer. I am a holder, a healer, a re-weaver of stories.
I am someone who writes for the scientists, the politicians, the teachers, the engineers, the children, and all the rest of us trying to do good and trying to get by.
I am trying to be brave enough to be an artist rather than a mere wordsmith. I am trying to live into the hardest questions about safety and fear, about sustainability and blind progress, about devotion and what transformation really means. Maybe today, I’ll succeed.
All of my most honest words are a prayer, knotted with worry and and woven with dreams.
The first layer of prayer, “may this just be another Friday.”
And deeper than that, “may we all have the courage to change everything about this violent, inequitable, too-hot-to-handle world.”
Ultimately, the prayer is that we can all live our own stories with bravery, with clarity, and with the support we need to get through, to grow, to thrive.
But first, the prayer that we will all get through this day.