Most weeks, I don’t know what I’m going to say in this newsletter. I sit down, take a breath, and see what comes.
I tried that twice already this week. I started a few paragraphs that bored me and thought, “AI could have written this. Blech.” I’ve been preoccupied with the inauguration, sad and distracted. Then Senior Night happened.
My daughter Loretta has played basketball at her high school for 4 years, and she started playing in first grade. We’ve met so many wonderful people along the way, and I would give anything to have one more night in the crowded Boys and Girls Club watching her out there. One of Loretta’s coaches, Nick, coached her in middle school. On Tuesday night, he drove up from Seattle in the frigid cold to see her game and drove back down again afterward. He sat in our Loretta Fan Section with grandparents, friends, neighbors, and kids Loretta babysits. We got a photo of all of us on the court afterward. Loretta wasn’t happy with the way she played, but I told her, “Honey, I hope all you remember about tonight is everyone who was there for you.”
This week, as I try to discern what’s mine to do in the next four years and beyond, I keep thinking of Nick. And I keep thinking of Mahalia Jackson in the movie “Selma,” picking up the phone in the middle of the night because MLK needed her to sing to calm his fears. I don’t coach basketball, and I don’t have the voice of an angel, but there’s always something I can do.
If we are spending our energy on outrage or its opposite, apathy, we won’t know what’s ours to do. We won’t volunteer to coach the basketball team in the first place, and we certainly won’t know it’s Senior Night, let alone make the drive to be there.
I don’t know about you, but I want to be one of the ones who shows up. I want to be awake, rooted in love. I can’t care about everything, but I can care a lot about a few issues. And I can care a heck of a lot about the people in my life, however they voted.
A phrase I’ve been carrying around with me lately is “Action absorbs anxiety.” Get out and move your body. Offer to babysit your neighbors. Call an old friend. Call your lawmakers. Go to the library and pick out something to read. Keep doing what is yours to do. And if you don’t know, now is the time to figure it out. Those who’ve come before us have done much harder things. You’ve got this. We’ve got this.