Dark Days

Just a reminder, most of my writing is really done for myself, as sort of therapy and a way to organize my thoughts. That especially applies to this piece.

I’m not that tough. I haven’t had to be. My experience with (true) adversity has been minimal. Even events that were cataclysmic didn’t really affect me personally that much. In terms of grief, I think it’s safe to say I’ve had less than my share.

I try to be aware and empathetic, so I’ve never been ignorant of world events and how they impact others; I’ve never belonged to the Libertarian school of thought that says, “If it’s not MY problem, it’s not a problem worth society taking a role in solving.” 

I was in high school when President Kennedy was assassinated; I thought it was awful, but it didn’t affect me like some of my classmates (or my wife, whom I was a long way, in terms of both time and distance, from knowing at the time). I understood why people were upset at the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but its only direct impact on me was relief that the class I cut wouldn’t count against me because the professor was so distraught he cancelled it. 

I legitimately failed my physical (which I took, no doctor’s note for me) after being drafted during the Vietnam War, and I darkly joked that for me to boycott classes after the Kent State massacre would have required I actually go to class. The floods in the district in which I taught were more impactful on my students than me. Student deaths are an unfortunate fact of life; I always tried to be supportive, but I felt far worse for my kids than myself. I knew that 9-11 was world changing, but I was always confident that we’d adapt and recover – and we did, even if such a recovery required redefining “normal.” 

I guess what I’m saying is that none of the above were really all that personal. Even my personal grief has been generally muted and not exactly tragic. Deaths of too young friends and co-workers were sad, but not devastating. The one unexpected death that I did grieve faded and didn’t resurface until well after the event itself, sitting with my wife having a drink, when the tears blew in like a summer storm. But like a storm, they, too, passed quickly and my life returned to normal.

But this feels different. This C-19 pandemic doesn’t seem like a temporary inconvenience, but more of a permanent upheaval in life as we know it, or at least I know it. Maybe things will truly get better, but at the moment I have almost no hope of an only slightly modified new normal, like 9-11. And I don’t feel well positioned to deal with it. Not tough enough, if you will. 

Part of that is based on my complete lack of confidence in the president of my country. I didn’t feel that way after 9-11. I’ve never felt this way, and I’ve lived under 11 previous presidents of both parties, 10 of whom I remember with some, if varying degrees of, clarity. I may not have been happy with the country’s direction or presidential leadership, but I viewed those administrations like I viewed some of the school administrators for whom I worked: “I’ll be here after you’re gone.” 

Congress, with its obsession on tribal victories, is only a little better. That toxic combo of presidential incompetence and irresponsibility and tribal, winner take all, congressional warfare, is just part of the problem, though. 

Another part, and related to my lack of confidence in the chief executive, is that mitigation compliance has become political, almost perverse. “If I support Trump, I must oppose any action to tamp down the pandemic. If I support Trump, attempts at mitigation are a plot against his re-election.” Interestingly this has even become a bit separated from political party; in Missouri there’s a protest planned against a Republican governor who was late to the party and an unenthusiastic guest but eventually joined in issuing a “Stay at Home” order.

Right now the disease is winning, even if far too many people are in denial, which threatens to make it even worse. I have little hope of a return to my comfortable, privileged life, and I, myself, am so much better off than people who are truly suffering, who have lost not just livelihoods but loved ones. For perhaps the first time since my early 20s, when I sort of enjoyed wallowing in negativity and angst, I am struggling to channel my inner Polyanna.

9-11: A Different Kind of Throwback Thursday

One of my formers, on this 13^th anniversary of 9-11, posted on Facebook, asking what we were doing that awful day. I was in my second year of my counseling gig at the high school. Obviously, not a topic covered in Counselor School. The news came in that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. To be honest, the thought of terrorism occurred only fleetingly to me (I tend to the naive when it comes to bad things), but I did wonder how such a terrible mistake could have happened. After calling Carolyn to tell her to turn on the TV, I gravitated to a television in Chris Ventimiglia's classroom, just in time to see the second plane hit the other tower, and then I knew that the inconceivable had happened, which was quickly confirmed by subsequent events.

For reasons I still don’t get, the district and/or middle school administration tried, more or less successfully I guess, to quarantine information from their building. Delaying information does not change the information itself and I, at least, was confident that the staff was more than competent to help kids make sense of it all. Postponing the bad news for 5 hours changed nothing and deprived students and staff of a chance to work together to share grief and knowledge.

But I had my own kids to worry about, so other than a shrug and shake, I moved on, from classroom to classroom. I don’t recall any kids being overtly traumatized, although my daughter was. (Then living in Ohio, she spent most the morning on the phone with Carolyn and didn’t fly for several years.) I do remember telling kids, “Your life has just changed forever, and in ways you can’t imagine. You may not see it right away, but your life now will be very different than it would have been yesterday.”

    As I watched President Bush address the nation, I remember thinking, “Maybe the right guy did get elected.” His speech made me calm, confident and comfortable; despite my misgivings about him politically, he seemed, well, presidential. Of course, I didn’t know he would move beyond a hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan to a conquest of Iraq, a country which, as an enemy of Bin Laden, clearly had had nothing to do with the horror of 9-11. Despite my words of warning to our students, I could not envision how widespread the chaotic fall of dominoes would become. But on that day, all of that was as inconceivable as terrorists flying airliners into the WTC.