Category: The Isolation Journals

Today I stopped by my husband’s office before coming home. I had read today’s prompt, and I was determined to make today the most recent time I felt really listened to.

So, I listened to my husband, which is something I am not always the best at. I asked him questions like Esther Perel’s question at a dinner party with Suleika and others who didn’t yet know each other: What would you list on your unofficial resumé?  He said, “I’ll be retiring soon, I don’t need a resumé.”

“OK, wise guy. What about an unofficial resume? Like you love tinkering with technology.” That got him going and saying funny and romantic things.

We talked about mud because of today’s poetry prompt from Margaret Simon. We both shared stories about playing in the dirt and mud when we were kids and when our own daughters played in the mud in our Arizona yard.

We talked a lot at home this evening too–about Dr. Solomon’s death on Saturday, and I asked him to share words that describe his emotions about this very special person’s death. Then he asked me to share my own words.

I learned something from Esther today. Listening leads to being listened to.

Today is Monday, Day 118 in Bahrain’s stay-at-home time, day 83 of The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. The prompt today is by relationship therapist, Esther Perel. Write about the last time you felt someone really listened to you. “What was it like—emotionally, physically, and energetically—to be heard?”

Today is Saturday, Day 116 in Bahrain’s stay-at-home time, day 81 of The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. The prompt today is by Susan Cheever. What would you write from a burning building, where there is no escape? You know it’s the last thing you will write. Who do you write to? What would you say?

Dear family,

(Or whoever gets this paper airplane flown out the window of my burning building – I hope you will try to pass it along to my family.)

Well, this is not how I expected to go out. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has made me realize that it could be a fatal bout of coronavirus that does me in or DNA related to my heart or, like this, in a burning building. It has made me more appreciative of my days, hours, and minutes. And now I just have a few left.

What should I say when I’m limited to these few stress-filled minutes left on earth?

First, of all, I’m not afraid. It took me some time, but I’ve realized it will happen. I know that there is a God and I’m thankful I don’t have to be in charge of life or death. So I’m ready.

Having said that, I do want to say that I have regrets. I have years that I was more fully alive than others. I wish I would have been more intentional about making the world a better place. I wish I would have listened when Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke when I was a kid.  I wish I would have asked more questions and demanded more answers. Now, it’s too late. I leave it to you, my daughters. I trust that the world is going to be in a much better place because of your generation. I know you will be better.

It’s getting hot now. I better go fly this letter out the window.

With all my love for now and eternity,

Mom

Today is Friday, Day 115 in Bahrain’s stay-at-home time, day 80 of The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. The prompt today, on Juneteenth, is by Marcus G. Miller, “How did you learn (or how are you learning) to balance work and play?” First, you should really read the reflection he wrote about this prompt on his Instagram account. It is stunningly beautiful.

 

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Today I was featured in #theisolationjournals, creative project by my good friend @suleikajaouad, a brilliant writer and inspiring speaker. Here are my reflections on this Juneteenth Jubilee celebration. “My father once told me that success is the price of admission to the next challenge. He told this to me after having received high praise for leading a successful project at work, and at that moment, I could detect, but could not yet name, several emotional colors blazing out of his eyes. There was the simple crimson pride of a job well done, there was the effervescent azure ebullience induced by the promise of a bright future, there was earthy brown contemplation of a warrior taking a moment’s rest, and there was black love. The love was black because he, in his blackness, was able to claim a level of victory that eluded so many men of his father’s generation, and men of his own. And he could take that lesson, a life-affirming blueprint for managing success, and teach it—from the full weight of the experience—to his black son. The words were clever enough as an aphorism, but what was transmitted to me was the full spectrum of what it meant to him to say those words. It nearly brought me to tears. And so when considering Juneteenth, that shining golden day in 1865 when General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and proclaimed the freedom of the black women and men who were enslaved there, even though the Emancipation Proclamation had come two and a half years earlier; when considering their joy, and jubilee, and dancing, I hear the words of my father. I see the pink and purple and candied red of their celebration, and I see the long grey road ahead, through history, connecting them to the colorful eyes of my father, connecting them to me. Let us hold labor and liberation in balance. Let us refuse to work without rest and reward, but also let us not eat, drink, and be merry, believing that tomorrow we will die. Let us mark every accomplishment with its deserved color, then let us not forget to look up at the ominous white snow-capped peaks of the mountains we must yet climb.” #math #saxophone #BAM #Juneteenth #Jubilee #freedom #philosophy #music

A post shared by Marcus G. Miller (@imaginewithmarcus) on Jun 19, 2020 at 8:36am PDT

I know as a white person on Juneteenth, I look at this prompt differently than Marcus did. He said so eloquently, “Let us hold labor and liberation in balance. Let us refuse to work without rest and reward, but also let us not eat, drink, and be merry, believing that tomorrow we will die. Let us mark every accomplishment with its deserved color, then let us not forget to look up at the ominous white snow-capped peaks of the mountains we must yet climb.” I know he speaks these words from a place that I cannot understand. My balancing work and play has been a trifling exercise in privilege. I have had ample opportunities to work and play. Sadly, I have spent too little of my time working for the liberation of oppressed people in our country and around the world. I am repenting of this fact now.

However, I will write about this prompt for me as I am today. “How did you learn (or how are you learning) to balance work and play?” I’m kind of a workaholic, and I’m a teacher. So put those two together and I’ve always worked too many hours. I love the work and it is never finished, so that is my teacher life. But, even for the ten years I took off to be at home with my kids, I seemed to always find other “work” to keep me busy–not always having to do with children. Now that my daughters are grown and married, I work even more hours. My husband works six days a week, so I always do too. We try to take Fridays off and relax and do some work that needs doing too–like today we went grocery shopping and changed the bed sheets. Then I find myself at the computer on Friday too, writing this journal entry and reading a few student novels.

For me play often consists of writing, cooking, creating. I do love to play games and read too. But really most of my “play” could be summed up in staying busy, making something, finishing something, publishing something. Why? I don’t know. I am always amazed that my husband can just sit and chill. I have never been able to do that much, but I have learned from him after lots of years of marriage.

I am still learning there is value in being bored.

Today is Wednesday, Day 113 in Bahrain’s stay-at-home time, day 78 of The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. The prompt from Lindsay Ryan will wait until another day, as you see, school is not finished yet for the summer for me. I’m reading last-minute novels by my students. They will be part of the links I share with my students for the summer.

So, I’m just laying some prompts here on some blog posts that I will come back to in the summer when I can stop and think about them. The prompt is to “Write about a time when you interacted with someone in a moment when both of you were vulnerable. How did you react to your own vulnerability and that of the other? What went acknowledged and what remained silent? Would you have handled the situation differently in retrospect? How did it change you?”