….and other reflections on the start of summer

I’m sitting on an old couch that smells a little like winter leaked through the roof (it did) and looking for a place to put my feet up between the Gilmore Girls box set and a half dozen towels haphazardly folded by my son. It’s summer, we’re on vacation and my body, soul and mind are tired.

I know why my body is tired. We finally decided to do something about the squirrel hotel that is our old cottage shed, and I spent the afternoon hauling shingles to the dumpster. Yes, this is what we do on holidays. It’s more or less like being at home but with a place to swim, paper plates, margaritas and spotty cell service. You know what they say: a change is as good as a rest.

But my soul? My mind? Why are we so tired?

It’s been a year.

This past fall, I started a new job that combined all my passions in one package. Part chaplain, part teacher, part writer, part bossy mom who keeps young adults from getting lost in the woods or hopping into trucks with strangers…I loved it. I loved it and just as I thought I was getting my footing; our dear friend got the call she’d been waiting on for two long years: an organ match for a double-lung transplant. There was much rejoicing, and many trips back and forth to the Toronto General Hospital.

Late winter took me to the United States and spring brought an end to the academic semester, the settling in of an immigrant friend, a couple of COVID delayed conferences, some amazing storytelling and finally the launch of my first novel, and the subsequent public book events.

Oh. And still COVID. Lockdowns, strained relationships and all the “regular” stress of daily life with a family of four navigating high school, homework, and the reboot of extra-curriculars.

Remember before? When we did all this and got used to over-performing and busy-ness? Remember when we said we would slow down, but we just got sick all the time and let our bodies do the slowing down for us? (Until sometimes they couldn’t.)

So, the summer holidays are here. I don’t know about you, but I needed a rest, even if it meant taking down a shed to slow down my own mind.

My oldest pals arrive at the lake, and we do nothing all day except sit and talk. Eventually we go for a walk, but we’re too lazy to wear proper footwear so we get a lot of gravel in our shoes, laugh, and turn around and go back to our lawn chairs.

Later, I stand in the shower feeling grateful. I glance up and smile to see that the spiders have taken over the ceiling and I’m merely a guest bathing beneath their intricate web. Just kidding, it takes more than three days of holidays for me to turn into a philosophical Jane Goodall. I admire it for a moment and then clean it up with a comb.

For all my striving, Nature carried on doing her thing: webs, nests, hives…

Recently, my pastor said it’s time to pay attention. Collectively we’ve been through trauma navigating COVID (obviously the spectrum of dislocation, grief, anxiety and hardship has not been proportional across society, but some shared trauma has been present for everyone) and now what we’re seeing just as summer opens up is this weird pattern where the invitations start piling up, everyone is eager to make up for lost traditions, renew bonds of friendship, get married, reunite, BBQ in backyards and… suddenly people turtle. Again.

Where we expect an eager “yes!”, we’re seeing hesitation, “let me check my calendar” followed by ghostlike silence. Did we become socially despondent over the last two years? Did our circles shrink and our desire to widen them again disappear? Have Netflix and Disney+ and Apple and Prime all sucked us in forever into the new golden age of television even as our short summer is passing us by?

For me, I feel a desire to say “no” out of fear I won’t get enough done. I feel like I can’t volunteer or socialize because I’m already behind! I recognize a compulsion to keep moving on holidays because wasn’t I already on vacation the whole time we were in lockdown?  (Uh, no. But time had its own accounting in those days. And maybe we don’t entirely trust time now…do we have enough, will it slip away, should we try to hoard it?) Now, the world is opening and it’s time to hustle! If I don’t do the things, I might end up totally obscure, like before. Even though…weren’t we ALL obscure during COVID? And also, I’ve heard rumours obscurity is kind of a spiritual goal, and I love spiritual goals. Or any goals. If someone has written a self-help book toting the benefits of intentional obscurity, I will probably read it. Now that I’m writing this, I think that might be the Bible. I’ll let you know.

(No wonder my mind is tired. I’m tiring myself out writing out all these neurotic thoughts.)

So, maybe you’re hearing “yes”, maybe you’re hearing “no”, maybe you’re saying “yes”, or your finger is hovering over an R.S.V.P until you are certain you will have to energy to engage. Here’s the thing: we’ve been through trauma navigating COVID, and what follows trauma, big or small, is PTSD.* 

I remember hearing from a friend who’d lost a parent that while the moment marked her life forever, she learned in therapy that how a traumatic event is processed determines the outcome for the child’s development. In other words, it’s not necessarily the traumatic event itself that determines whether the child will lead a happy life, but the PTSD management. In her case, the loving community that carried her family through the darkest seasons following her parent’s death shaped her future and gave her real hope to hold onto.

All of this to say, I’m probably not going to start contemplating bugs at length or instantly stop worrying if I should be working more and resting less. My friend Alyssa reminds me often that rested people are dangerous people, which is so provocative. Not that I want to be dangerous perse, but I want to be alive, which I think is more the point.

And so. For better or for worse, we’re in this together.

During this season of meeting one another’s post-traumatic stress head on I hope you encounter more mild flare-ups than severe symptoms. Maybe you’ll see signs of hope and healing—just a little gravel in someone’s flip flop—but it could happen that when you finally meet that old friend, there will be a cold front or a rude outburst that will throw you off your already fragile game. What just happened? Take a deep breath.

“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Proverbs 15:1

You don’t need to solve all the things. You can’t anyways, so just ignore that little devil on your shoulder. Give him a flick with your finger and send him tumbling backwards. You can’t solve all the things, not before COVID and not after COVID either.

You can rest, though. (Points finger at self.)

And if you absolutely can’t, then you can come help me deal with this and we can try to solve the world’s problems together, at the least the squirrel variety.

 *Aside: When I hear people flippantly say, “I was traumatized”, as in, they had to wait for a half an hour in a line-up and that left them “emotionally scarred”, I tend to roll my eyes. I feel like only people who’ve been badly burned in a tragic house fire or ran away from a violent country under a military dictatorship should be allowed to use such fancy words. That’s how I feel, but I don’t want to write a treatise suggesting a better word choice at this moment, so let’s leave it, with the caveat I don’t think it’s the perfect expression, but it gets the point across.