Thankfully ...

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Courage Astorga: Napoleon couldn't take us and neither can Covid-19
Thank you Healthcare Workers, Police, Truckers, etc.

Do they ever say that on TV anymore?  When I was a kid and watched TV we'd hear this when breaking news happened or the TV Network (remember when we used that word for other than Internet connectivity?) connections were lost temporarily.

I'm using it because there is an important message that needs to be communicated today, unrelated to the 'normal programming' on this channel.






The headline should read something like 

"Parents Defy The Laws of Physics in Maintaining Family Life."

It is an outcome worthy of much praise and celebration that parents have created safe and stimulating environments with no notice, no extra funding, previous training or new facilities, and kids that didn't have any input into the timing and conditions.  The conditions weren't fully known at the beginning and seem to have changed in an unpredictable way.

The addition of the younger kids to the home all day, ones that parents were used to having out of the house 7 hours a day and older kids away at college most of the time came into the 24/7 home space demanding that many parents learn how to make the home a more structured living-learning community. This involved the blending of the social side, the technology side, and likely the emotional side.  It was not easy but I hear examples of both success and failure along that journey.

I am really looking forward to the application of the lessons learned during this time to our lives in the future.  Education at every level will surely have different expectations and methodology.  Businesses too have seen how effective 'working from home' can be for some roles.  The internet has proved very resilient from what I can see.  Kids of all ages have become more comfortable with using the technology and that includes parents - they are someone's kids, right?

I say all this to support my feeling of gratitude to parents everywhere, including extended support 'family members,' who may have had roles in making it all work.  Thank you and please keep up the good work at the intimate, hand-holding level, the listening and speaking level, and by sharing your successes and your frustrations.  We all learn from mistakes too, right?

We are a long-term married couple with no kids or parents physically present to care for or to care for us.  That would be the same if we were in our US home.  But via the use of technology to communicate simple texts, still photos, voice messages, and video calls we have managed to be a family irrespective of the miles between us.

So I would like to propose that we expand the celebration of Mother's Day to include the whole family, whose roots are the mothers in most cases.  Your kids are learning how to be parents every minute and as grandparents ourselves I am glad that our kids learned from (or forgot) the things I did wrong as a dad and are doing great.  Focus please on the lessons learned and less on the opportunities lost.

Embrace (depending on your hemisphere - I do have readers in the Southern side) on the spring seasonal changes that are going on without us even 'logging in' and clicking on the right button: Trees sprouting leaves, flowering plants emerging, leaves, buds, and flowers emerging. Beautiful in spite of the lockdown.  Life goes on.  As they say on the Camino "Keep on Walking."



I close with two things that have made a positive difference for me and encourage you to consider these practices:

1) Gratitude: Years ago I read a short essay that encouraged a gratitude practice.  It was so simple.  The author suggested that each evening you write down three things that you were grateful for that day.  I added a calendar on the phone called 'gratitude' and started writing the entries each evening as directed.  Soon I was doing them as they occurred - or rather as soon as it occurred to me that I should be grateful for something.  It wasn't long before there were a LOT more than three a day.  They weren't big things usually, just little chances to make life better for someone or myself.  Or being in the right place at the right time to see an old friend walking down the sidewalk.  Or getting handed a hot-out-of-the-oven croissant at the bakery for a mid-morning snack.

It did not take long to not need to write them down as I was always had my 'that is great' sensor going.  But I did put together the sentence I would have written and said it to myself.  The sentence always included 'Thank You for ...' and never 'Thanks for ...' as, to me, one of the key elements of realizing gratitude is thanking SOMEONE. Sometimes it is possible to communicate your thanks to the persons you feel are responsible but often it is not.

2) FEAR Not: This one is harder for most of us.  It started for me with a mother that should have been fearful for many reasons but appeared to not be held back by the fear.  But it was solidified by reading, at random, a library book called The Science of Fear (Daniel Gardener) which changed my life.  This book may not be your book.  People who identify as Christians or Jews can read this advice, or really, this command, over and over in scripture, 55 times in the Old Testament and 16 in the New Testament (KJV) in a quick search. Likewise, the Quran includes many mentions of the same advice for followers of Islam. So Thank You, Daniel, for writing that book.

Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life (Gregg Levoy) is another book with a message that puts things together for many people.  The bottom line is to use the exercise of living to lead in positive directions and not to running fast and further away from what might happen to you.

In an on-line meeting the other night Gregg Levoy shared a lot of questions, as is his style of teaching, and I'd like to share paraphrases of 3 of them with you:

• Have you noticed yourself exhibiting more compassionate behavior during the pandemic?
• Is there some way that you imagine this event having a healing effect on your life?
• Of whatever changes this event has brought to your life, which ones would you like to become part of 'the new normal'?

Those who are mothers, Thank You!  Those who support mothers, Thank You.  Those who have mothers, be Thankful.  For those of us whose mothers are no longer with us, Fear Not, cuddle with the memories, share them in words or deed, and be grateful.

What resources have made an impact on your life?  Please share them in the comments.

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The Other Jew of The Day is Yocheved: She braved Egyptian decree for three months to save her son from certain death, then orchestrated it so he’d be raised in a royal household. And it all paid off: Her boy Moses went on to become the greatest Jewish leader of all time.