Bedknobs and Broomsticks

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves….the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

Okay, first of all, I need you to know I hate that I’ve started this post with a quote. I hate even more that it’s a quote I thought I DISCOVERED when I was sixteen. Kid you not. I thought I discovered Rilke and was aptly humiliated when I graciously bestowed a boy I liked with this quote in its entirety, written in my beautiful, looping teenage hand (It’s from “Letters to a Young Poet” if you are truly lucky enough to be finding these words for the very first time, every word in the book is this good) and he responded with, “Oh yeah. My roommate’s girlfriend gave him this. It’s on our door.”

Right now we are all trying to live our lives into answers, but it’s hella hard these days. I had a phone call with a fifty-two-year-old client yesterday, where I actually found myself thinking, “where is his DAD?” My client was so panicked, that for just a second I wished there was a backup grown-up who could tuck him into bed and tell him it would all be okay.

And then I realized — we all probably want that.

It might be the lack of political leadership, it might be the lack of clarity about the actual physical threat that exists outside our doors, but we are feeling the fear. For lots of us, that unsoothed, under-supported fear has grown into full-blown anxiety.

In the state where I live and work there are all sorts of rules about providing virtual therapy sessions to clients. Its previously come down to — you must be licensed in the state where your client is receiving therapy — so if my college student was just sent home to Texas and I’m not licensed there, in the past we would be SOL. No sessions.

This week, states and insurance companies have agreed, rightly, that continuity of service is what matters and so, I and many of my colleagues are doing round after round of video sessions. Good right?

Yes, completely. Yes.

But also no.

While it is absolutely better than nothing, it is not the same.

First of all, the obvious — my hair. The bags under my eyes. The half-eaten toast I forgot to clean up off my bed…These video conferences are not awesome for me. As I therapist (and probably as a person) I make sense of things using the energy I feel inside of me. It runs me through me like a cold wave when my client and I are in the “truth” and it’s next to impossible for me to feel it when I am distracted by my horribly flat hair and my resurgence of teenage acne.

I refer to my cold, interior wave as “Namaste, “ — the spirit in me (yep, I discovered that too. Just made that word up on the fly). I may be struggling with religion and faith, but I know my spirit when I feel it, and basically everything, my job, my writing, my conversations, my yoga practice, my homeschooling — they all go better when I’ve got Namaste online.

Funny thing? It doesn’t seem to like video conferencing.

But look, I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it.

I think we should just keep paying attention.

I remember when video conferencing first became a thing, I had a client with young children who’s military husband had deployed overseas again. She’d anticipated that her kids connecting with their dad by video would be better but it didn’t seem to be. At one point she said, “I think its easier to not expect him to call and be delighted when he does than have my son crushed when he doesn’t get to see his dad’s face on his birthday and then worry all day that he’d been killed”

Essentially she was talking about feeling safe managing expectations.

So yep.

We have an entire planet right now that is trying to feel safe, and manage expectations and it is maybe not going great…but damn if we aren’t trying.

Lately, I keep thinking about that old movie starring Angela Lansbury, Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). Have you seen it? No? Well, there is your homeschooling for today. History and music, science, geography, home economics (You’re welcome). My younger brother and sister and I watched it dozens of times — working quotes (I like you better as a Rabbit, Charlie) into everyday conversation in that cool way siblings can exclude other people without intention. It was our favorite.

And somehow I completely missed that it was about World War II

I showed it to my own kids (who predictably thought it was weird and old fashioned and just “kinda good”) and there it was — the war.

Children sent from their homes in London to avoid the bombings, end up in rural England with an apprentice witch (Lansbury). Eventually, with the help of some wonderful cartoon cross over musical numbers and a professor (David Tomlinson, whom my kids recognized as the dad in the original Mary Poppins) they discover a spell to turn inanimate objects into soldiers and help win the war.

Children sent from their homes in London to the English countryside. Did you catch that part?

Because yeah. That was a thing.

Desperate to keep children safe, parents put their babies (one of the kids in the movie is five) on trains, sent them to the countryside in the hopes that strangers would take them in, and care for them. And for the most part, that’s exactly what happened.

I’m not trying to bright side everything here, but mercy.

I’m four days into a self-quarantine and my kids are still sleeping in their beds. I’m ok, my friends are okay, and my clients are mostly okay. There is fear for all of us, and some of us are having outsized reactions. I’ve had more than one conversation about what will happen in August, or when school doesn’t open again in the fall. I get why we want to have the conversation — but it won’t work. We don’t have all the details because of its only March today.

Unchecked, that fear will morph into anxiety. Anxiety is Chicken Little running around yelling “the sky is falling.”

So Let’s be careful, okay? Me included. Because running is exhausting and yelling gives me a migraine, and I’ve got shit to do today.

Let’s try homeschooling today, and making dinner today, and worrying about our neighbors today.

Anything beyond that is anxiety. Fear of something bad happening in the future. Worry and suffering about something that might not even happen.

Yes, I also know it might. I get that kids may be out of school for a long time, which would be very hard.

But if I’m too anxious today, then homeschooling today, making dinner today, living through today is too hard.

So don’t horde your anti-anxiety meds because China might stop shipping them. Take them now if you need them now. They will make now more manageable. Don’t miss your google hangout mediation class to teach your sixth grader math that made you cry in sixth grade. Under no circumstances should you be googling “how many hours of recommended screen time child age 2.” Today is not the day.

Just do today with me, okay?

I say this with zero percent smugness, but I’ve had fun with my kids the past few days. They’ve been studying the states (did you know its illegal for a woman to wear a bathing suit on a highway in Kentucky unless she’s accompanied by two policemen or carrying a club — yes, obviously, the whys are today’s lesson), and doing some creative writing. I’m not really teaching them anything, no real answers….we are just living into today. I can feel my Namaste here.

As I said to a friend yesterday. I have no idea where we are headed. I believe my “Namaste” will point me in the only direction forward for me. I believe in kindness — my neighbors are checking in with each other, running errands, sharing websites, and resources. And I believe in capitalism.

Yep, you read that right.

I completely and utterly trust that even though I know there aren’t enough masks, some amazing business person (maybe also a philanthropist, but it’s the cash I care about in this scenario) is converting over his widget making company to one that makes masks). Same for hand sanitizer, and please God, toilet paper.

I bet one of the sharks on Shark Tank is creating the equivalent of the “masterclass” I constantly see advertised on FaceBook. This one will be for kids, and we will soon have them learning Natural Science from Delia Owens (Where the Crawdads Sing) Cooking from Jamie Oliver (Eponymous cookbooks), Compassion Class from Glennon Doyle (Untamed, Love Warrior) and Elizabeth Gilbert (City of Girls, Eat Pray Love) and Brene Brown (Daring Greatly, Rising Strong), and creative writing from Austin Channing Brown (I’m Still Here). School will morph and change and be better (and apparently have no Math because I literally know zero math. Not even the names of people who do the math).

The classes will be free, but the books will not. Because my dream team actually deserves to get paid, AND amazon is going to want its cut.

Look, obviously I’m not going to be the one to solve the problems of tomorrow (but honestly, how I am I not already pitching this genius plan somewhere), but I know we will get there.

Let’s live today in Namaste

(shit. That rhymes. I’ve been a writer just long enough to know you are supposed to kill your darlings — your too perfect phrases…but I’m leaving it, sorry Dani Shapiro and every other writer of substance).

Let’s exist in good enough.

Let’s trust in kindness and Capitalism.

And stay connected.