There has been so much negativity regarding the Year 2020, I wanted to put together a list of some of the wonderful things that have happened in the world this year:
Most of the murder hornets stayed home.
On Chadwick, COVID, and other things...
I am on my couch with my laptop open. I sat down intending to do some research for my fantasy football draft tomorrow, but when I pulled up Safari, I saw that Chadwick Boseman died at 43. Earlier this week, I saw social media posts from my cousins about a friend of theirs who died from COVID in his 30s. I got a text last week from some college buddies about the death of a person we went to college with. In the last month, I’ve heard of others right around my age, a little older, or a little younger, die of various issues. This part of life isn’t about “how terrible 2020 is.” As terrible and heartbreaking as it is, you could pick any month ever, and the records would show that young people have died, celebrities or not.
But why am I, at this very moment, watching a slideshow of pictures and videos of my life over the past three years, why am I, at this very moment, watching Emmy giggling, and now she’s running, and now she’s catching bubbles, and now she’s sleeping on my chest…
**
A few months after Emmy was born, I had a routine check-up with my doctor, only my doctor had an emergency and I was going to be seen by someone new. He was a tall fellow, slender, with wire-rimmed glasses and a perfectly trimmed beard. He didn’t say hi when he walked in, washed his hands with his back to me, completely silent, then sat down and made some monotone chitchat, asking me about any stresses in my life. I told him that Emmy had a rough start to her life, things were crazy at home, things were crazy at work, and I was getting zero to two hours of sleep per night.
He said, “Well, your blood pressure and BMI are too high. If you want to walk your daughter down the aisle someday, you better fix those.”
He was right about the BMI, I told him, but my blood pressure was always high at the start of the appointment, and they usually take it again after the appointment and it’s in normal range.
“Okay,” he said, “but your daughter’s wedding. That’s what you need to be thinking about.”
Ever since that day, I moved all the apps on my phone to the second page so that the first, and only, thing I see when I use my phone is the background photo of Emmy, my constant reminder about why I need to be healthy. And yet, I’m still right around the same weight, still around the same level of health. The only thing that’s changed is I’m older.
***
Early on in quarantine, to pass the time and keep our minds off the way the world was changing, every night, when work was done and Emmy was asleep, Patty and I would watch a movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We watched them in narrative order. Black Panther was toward the end of this order, but it had always been Patty’s favorite or second favorite movie in the MCU, and even though we made a blood pact not to watch any of the films without the other, I caught her one day watching Black Panther by herself.
“Hey!” I said as I walked into the bedroom.
“It was on,” she said, shrugging as she folded a towel on our bed. “And it’s just soooooo good.”
I sat on the bed and finished the movie with her, both us folding the clothes. We’d just had a fight the night before, and we both knew we weren’t going to talk about it that night, we were just going to watch the film. This is the power of art and entertainment – me actually folding clothes, for one, but also bringing people together. And when young people like Chadwick Boseman can do that, when they have that talent to bring people together, to make humans feel connected, whether in a theater or in a stadium or on a stage, or even a master bedroom that had been the scene of an argument the night before, you want them to be able to keep doing that for you. That is the selfish secret of so much of our utter despair when young artists die – there was something special about them, they were supposed to spend their lives making us feel less alone, but if they can die so young, what does that mean for the rest of us?
***
I’ve taken COVID as seriously as I can. I’m mostly 100% telework, I have groceries delivered, I haven’t been in another building besides a UPS store in 2-3 weeks, I wear masks when I’m supposed to, I socially distance more than six feet. But when you’re in quarantine, or shelter-in-place, or whatever you want to call it, the things you let into your life are so important, because it’s so easy to focus like a laser on them, whether you want to or not. But with the media filled with COVID and police killings and wildfires and other killings, it’s hard to let anything in without letting in the reaper.
I’ve never thought about mortality as much as I have over the past few months. It’s everywhere. Being with Emmy everyday has been such a lift – this not-so-little ball of life consistently leaving her happy impact on the day – but it is also a reminder of how fast time moves, like a bright, fiery comet crossing the entire sky in a blink.
How can the days be so slow and yet the months so short? Who is keeping the clock? What song will Emmy and I dance to at her wedding?
***
I started this blog last night. It is now 6:42pm on the following day. I am sitting at the dining table. Snippets of life are happening around me. Patty is on the phone with a friend. Emmy is stacking Legos behind me and knocking them down. Someone is mowing their lawn outside. After I finish this paragraph, Patty and I will put Emmy to bed. Then I will take a shower. Then I will meet Patty in the living room, where we will watch Black Panther again, and at some point in the film, Boseman as T’Challa will yell, “I never yielded! And as you can see, I am not dead!” I will look at the baby monitor, see Emmy cuddled in her blankets, pull Patty in closer, and think, “I am alive.”
That Thing We Sleep With
It’s 1am in the morning and I’ve had a little cramp in my toe for about half an hour. I keep trying to go back to sleep, but it’s one of those anxious nights when every thought becomes an entire novel. I reach out in the dark toward the nightstand for my phone. It lights up like a beacon in my hands. I make an appointment with Dr. Webb…. MD, and what do you know, the doctor can see me immediately. Without even examining me, he diagnoses my tiny toe cramp as a symptom of the Bubonic Plague.
For the rest of the night, my thoughts migrate from my impending health crisis to how this thing, my sleek and trusty phone, has become my doctor, and not just my doctor, but my librarian, bookie, banker, portfolio manager, purchaser, teacher, researcher, nutritionist, fitness instructor, appointment keeper, navigator, news anchor, photographer, videographer, publisher, postal worker, meteorologist, translator, travel agent, yogi, deejay, that friend who’s always trying to get me to play more video games AND that friend who’s always trying to get me to be more social. If I were single, it would be my matchmaker, too.
It’s no wonder my phone thinks I’m dying.
It has taken over all the roles in my life that used to belong to humans.
Except one.
Is there someone you love?
Do you hold them, look at them, pay attention to them, take care of them, pick them up and carry them, spend all day touching them, spend all night with them, miss them, need them, want them, come running when they call you like you do your phone?
That’s a lot of dopamine!
I know I don’t, at least not all the time. Maybe it’s because there’s no real commitment and thus no real chance of heartbreak. If my phone doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain, I simply trade it in for a new one. Maybe it’s because there is no gratification delay. I push a button or touch a screen and immediately receive that quick hit of dopamine. Maybe it’s because my phone is the most powerful echo chamber, curated to make me feel so damn good about myself. Or maybe it’s because my phone knows me best.
The Amazon app knows my favorite books (Harry Potter). The Pandora app knows my favorite music (90s R&B and Hip Hop). The Chipotle app knows what I want on my burrito (salsa, never; extra sour cream, always). The Maps app knows where I’ve been (Chipotle). The Bank of America app knows all the secret things I spend my money on (Funko Pops). And the Firefox app knows all those weird, dark thoughts that end up in the search engine (can I still love the art of a bad person? is the world a simulation? is reincarnation real? is Chipotle still having an E. coli problem?)
Our phones know the who, what, where, and when of us, but there are some things they will never know. No algorithm or data or technology can know the way my daughter’s laugh pulls the light-strings deep inside me, or how I respond when someone I love needs a hug, or the emotional cycling involved with rediscovering and recreating my self at the same time. My phone will never understand the topography of marriage or what it means to navigate the world in my body. Our phones will never know the Why of us. They would need hearts to do that.
Maybe we just need to stop treating Siri like she has one.
A Different Kind of Kindness (The Purple Balloon)
A week before shelter-in-place started, a week before much of the world came to a halt, there was a birthday party for my aunt. It was the picture of pre-COVID life for me: people gathered together, storytelling, shoving food in our faces, my three-year-old daughter Emmy running around and laughing with her cousins. And yet the thing that stands out the most from that party is not the karaoke or the Filipino food, but rather the purple balloon Emmy took home.
Over the next month, Emmy would play with this purple balloon, twirling with it, batting it up to the ceiling, or sitting on it to try and make it pop. It survived. Every night, after Emmy was put to bed, I sat on our couch to watch TV, but ended up staring at this purple balloon with its purple string, bobbing in the corner of the living room, just to the left of the TV. I don’t recall if Emmy always put it in the same place or if the ceiling fan just pushed it to that corner, but every night, without fail, there it was, a happy little ball of air bouncing against the ceiling.
Not THE purple balloon in this story. I never thought to take a photo of that one for some reason.
As weeks passed, and air dissipated out the balloon, it descended further and further away from the ceiling. The once shiny rubber was dull and covered in dirty handprints. I noted how far it fell – one day it was a couple inches from the ceiling, a few days later just above the floor lamp, a week after that just above the armchair. At some point, the string got caught in the ceiling fan, so we cut it off, and Emmy soon lost interest in the balloon altogether.
A few days ago, I found it on top of some cords behind the TV stand. Dusty, wrinkled, deflated. My quarantine life had started out much like the balloon’s. I felt good. I was certain it wouldn’t get to me. I had my wife, my daughter, tons of Netflix and Hulu to stream, a new elliptical machine in the garage, books to read, books to write, and the ability to work from home. Little by little, however, isolation chipped away at me. I grew lonely and irritable. I felt defeated at trying to telework and give as much attention to Emmy as she needed. I became overly frustrated with Emmy’s suddenly voluminous tantrums, forgetting quarantine was probably affecting her more than it affected me. I wasn’t getting much sleep, worried about being a terrible father or how much technology Emmy was using or why fatherhood had become such a struggle. I was angry at the way people were talking at each other and about each other online. I was angry at the news. I convinced myself that I was seeing people truly for the first time, especially as it related to COVID, selfish and incapable of seeing past their own noses. Other things and thoughts and realizations happened, and the next thing I knew, I was on an impromptu walk in midday heat, staring at an empty playground, feeling like at any second my chest would explode in screams or tears or both.
It didn’t. I watched a squirrel for a while, took some deep breaths, went back home, and, not more than an hour later, found the old balloon.
You may have seen this quote before:
Often misattributed to Plato and other people.
I’ve never liked the quote. It values silence. It values a lack of communication. It values a lack of connection. While kindness does look like treating everyone with empathy, as the quote suggests, to me, an even kinder world looks like one where people actually share what they are going through with the idea of helping other people out, of helping people feel less alone. Most of us love the catharsis we get from reading a book or listening to music or watching a TV show or movie that moves the heart and speaks to our pain and experience, precisely because it makes us feel like we’re not alone, that someone else out there understands us. We crave that connection and understanding, but we are so unwilling to be that book, song, show, or film to another person. We are unwilling to be the source of connection.
When people ask me how my day is going now, I tell them. If it’s going great, I tell them. If it’s not going great, I let them know. New friendships have developed from this alone. Meaningful conversations. Deeper connections than the simple “Fine” and “Did you see the Sacramento Kings game?” Of course this doesn’t mean not to value your own privacy, I’m just saying we can’t ask for empathy or understanding when we aren’t willing to share it or give it back. Like the quote says, we’re all going through something. That includes the person you’re asking to be kind to you. Be kind back, or be kind first. Share. Share your humanity.
Or is this just me being selfish, because I have felt lonely these past few months? Am I the only withered balloon out there? Well, sharing the fact that I’m struggling through quarantine is hopefully me putting my money where my mouth is. If there are other deflated balloons out there, let’s chat.
Maybe we can help each other float again.
Fat Jesus Doesn't Get the Girl
In the 7th grade, I was on the Spam and Fishstick Friday side of pudgy. I'd never eaten very healthily, but a series of well-timed growth spurts kept me svelte enough to avoid most fat jokes. Unfortunately, by 12 years old and already 5'11", I'd pretty much stopped growing (maybe two more inches into the first half of high school), and my "baby" fat really started to settle in.
My school at the time, the now defunct St. Peter's Catholic School near Stockton and Fruitridge, held a Stations of the Cross play every Christmas season. For you non-Catholics out there, the Stations of the Cross is a series of fifteen events from Jesus being condemned to death to Jesus' resurrection. It's normally depicted in some kind of artistic form, and if you ever entered a Catholic Church and wondered what those carvings/paintings on the walls were and why they were marked with the Roman Numerals I to XV, well now you know.
The "play" wasn't so much a play as it was a bunch of 8th graders standing still on the dusty stage of the school's auditorium for a few minutes per Station, illustrating, in human form, what those artistic representations might've looked like if a group of multiethnic middle schoolers from South Sac had actually participated in said events. In case you missed it in the last sentence, let me make it more clear - the play was for 8th graders only. Unfortunately, none of the 8th grade boys wanted to take on the iconic role of Jesus. Maybe they felt they couldn’t live up to it. Maybe they didn’t want to carry the cross (yes, there was an actual cross, but more on that later). Whatever their reasons, despite multiple admonishments by Sister Esther, the kindhearted nun in charge of the play, the 8th grade boys all declined. So what did Sister Esther do? She asked me to stay after class one day and tried to guilt me into taking on the role of Jesus.
Sister Esther and friends praying for a 7th grader to take on the role of Jesus.
I said no. Then again. Then again. Play Jesus? As a 7th grader? Are you kidding me? Talk about pressure. But after more guilting from her, the Sister Principal, some other teachers, and my mother (Hi, Mom!), and thinking maybe this would absolve me of some of the sins I’d already accumulated (like stealing chocolate milk from the cafeteria fridge and making out behind the dumpsters), I said “fine.”
Rehearsals started immediately. I really didn't mind initially because there was an 8th grade girl I'd had a gigantic crush on. We'll call her Brienne. Brienne was different. She was bold enough to rock the pixie haircut while the other girls were still Aquanetting their bangs to high heaven. She was bold enough to eschew cheerleading and instead played softball, volleyball, and basketball and rolled up those ugly, uniform plaid skirts just enough to seem rebellious. During rehearsals, she kept smiling at me and giving me the eye. I'd find her and her gal pals, two girls of the giggling genus, on the stairs below the stage, looking at me and giggling while Brienne's face turned red. It was the stuff of innocent YA novels. It was the beginning of something special.
Or not.
You see, Jesus has to take his shirt off. It hadn't occurred to me that maybe that's why the 8th grade boys didn't want to do it. As a group, they were not the in-shapest bunch I'd ever seen. Robed for the first nine Stations, the tenth is generally entitled, in one way or another, "Jesus is Stripped of His Clothes." So that's what happens in the play. From Stations Ten to Fourteen, I learned in rehearsals, I'd be standing on the stage for about 20 minutes, being faux-nailed to a cross, dressed in nothing but the faux crown of thorns (which somehow did manage to cut my forehead) and a shaggy, brown cloth that wrapped the basketball shorts Jesus certainly wasn't wearing.
Before we go on, let me describe the cross. It was a real cross, made of wood, probably 30-40 pounds, that I had to carry on my shoulder for most of the play. For the Crucifixion scenes (Stations 11-13, for those keeping track at home), Sister Esther, being as brilliant as she was, decided we would make it look like I was actually nailed to a cross. She took a heavy wooden box that stood about three feet high, cut a slit in the top the exact size of the base of the cross, slid the cross into it, and told me to stand on the box with my arms outstretched along the wood. This meant that I’d be standing there, shirtless, for about 20 minutes while everyone in the audience and in the play (including Brienne) would be looking up at me.
The thing is, until The Moment, I didn't even consider myself fat, so when (un)dress rehearsal came, one day before Opening Night, I took off my shirt without much thought. I climbed up on the box, extended my arms like I was told, and immediately heard Brienne and the gals giggling again by the stairs. I overheard one of them say, "Jesus wasn't fat." He wasn't Filipino or confused about puberty, either, but sometimes you need to suspend disbelief.
The actual day of the play was worse. I was playing Jesus, see, and I had to look bloody at the right moments. Sister Esther had decided to stage the play as glow in the dark, meaning most of our costumes were white and there were big black lights facing the "actors" from the front of the stage. This also meant I would be wearing strategically placed bandaids that had been colored with highlighter ink to produce the appearance of blood. Two of these bandaids were placed on my upper abdomen, one on the left and one on the right, so that in the dimness of the auditorium, and the black light shining on me, the location of those two bandaids looked like nipples for extremely sagging breasts.
By the time the resurrection scene came, and I stood on the box where the cross had been in, swathed in brilliant white clothes, my right hand raised high over my fellow actors and even higher over the audience, who would soon be clapping and cheering after finishing their prayers, all I could think about was Brienne's giggling. She stood in front of me either as Mary Magdalene or Veronica, I'm not sure, her head hooded but face turned up to me. Whether she was looking at me or not, I don't know, because I made sure to keep my eyes on the Exit sign across the auditorium, shining green like some kind of emerald pathway to salvation. That was too serious. Let's try that again…. shining green like some kind of emerald pathway to the parking lot outside, because even though they were serving punch and cookies and the refrigerator in the kitchen was filled with chocolate milk, I really just wanted to go home.
Brienne never looked at me the same after that, and for the next two weeks, her friends couldn’t look at me without giggling or smirking. Brienne graduated a few months later and I never saw her again. I've spent years in shape, feeling great about myself, and I've spent years doing and feeling the exact opposite. But if there’s a silver lining, it’s this - I had an opportunity few in this world will ever have. I got to play Jesus, even if my bandaid nipples were hanging a little bit low.
Frozen
Many people who know me know that I hate the film Frozen. Hate is probably too strong a word here, but I’m going to use it anyway. “Let It Go” is the most annoying song I’ve heard in the last decade, and that’s coming from someone who listens to “Baby Shark” multiple times a day. On top of that, it actually goes against the message of the film. After running away from her problems, Elsa finally decides she’s going to be herself and just “let it go.” In doing so, she unleashes an eternal winter on the kingdom, leading to a chain of events that ends with her sister Anna needing to sacrifice herself to save Elsa’s life. It’s this act of sacrifice that ultimately redeems Elsa. Letting yourself rely on those who love you is what saves you, the film seems to say, not the “I don’t care about anyone else and I’m just going to do me” message of the song.
But hey, I’m glad a gazillion kids all over the world know the song by heart.
(Insert your “Let it go, Elison” joke here. It’ll only be the millionth time I’ve heard it.)
One of my daughter’s Frozen contraband. Stop trying to look so innocent, Elsa!
Before Emmy was born, I told myself there would be no Frozen propaganda in the house – no clothes, no toys, nothing. I knew it was a strange thought to have, a tiny, inconsequential rebellion against conformity, the kind of thing so many of us do. Maybe you refuse to watch Game of Thrones or try out that new restaurant everyone is talking about or wear exercise clothes to work even though the dress code forbids it. We acquiesce so willingly to most social rules and norms that we must have some places in our identities that are separate from the hivemind and the world.
Emmy just turned three the other day and, despite my best attempts, has many Frozen merchandise in the house. There are the mini-figurines of Anna, Elsa, Sven, and Olaf. There are the Frozen-branded maracas and recorder which, amazingly, isn’t as bad as “Let it Go” even when Emmy is blowing it straight into my ear. There are the underpants, the sweater, the books, the stickers. They were all gifts for various birthdays and Christmases, so guilt prevented me from donating them to Goodwill. And Emmy likes them, so, I guess that’s that.
But here’s the thing: Emmy doesn’t even like the movie. Whenever we turn Disney + on, and I ask what she wants to watch, she screams “Not Elsa, not Elsa!” as if Elsa snatched away her favorite balloon and popped it in her face. The first time Emmy yelled that, a surge of pride overcame me – that’s right, Emmy! Don’t like it just because you’re a girl and girls are supposed to like it – but that was quickly swallowed up by a wave of disgust. Did I do that? Did I force some weird value judgment/identity marker on my young child?
As it turns out, no. My mother showed Emmy the movie one time, and there was a scene early on that scared her, and she hasn’t wanted to watch it since then. But what if I had? Isn’t that what parents do? Isn’t that our main job? To pass on our beliefs, our values, our stories onto our progeny?
Or maybe our job is to not do that. At least not all the time.
When I talk to people now about anything – sports, social issues, work, whatever – I'm always thinking about what stories we’ve inherited. Stories about what it means to be a man or woman, black or white or brown, an American or a foreigner, a citizen or an immigrant, rich or poor, religious or atheist, carnivore or vegan, or all the shades and flavors in-between. So much of what we believe and thus, how we negotiate the world and other people, is based on stories we have inherited. But stories, while immensely powerful, are often not factual, especially as they pass down from generation to generation. It’s like the world’s longest game of Telephone, each retelling moving further and further from the truth while further entrenching us into beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world that we think are 100% true.
What results is confusion, frustration, misunderstanding. We have trouble relating to people’s experiences because they don’t fit the stories we’ve been told about how others should act or think or feel. We perform a bunch of mental exercises to justify the story (see my first paragraph), which then justifies the way we treat others, or even the way we treat ourselves. We need to be better about the stories we let ourselves believe and, for those of us who are parents, we need to be better about the stories we pass on.
Someday, maybe Emmy will decide she loves Frozen because Elsa eventually let her sister in, showing the value of familial love, or that Elsa learned to be herself and to never apologize for it. Or maybe she will simply love Frozen because Olaf is funny. I don’t know. What I do know is I hope I can be thoughtful about what I’m passing down to her, so that her life isn’t frozen in some outdated story, including the one about her Dad hating Frozen, but still wanting her to make up her own mind about that and, well, everything else.
The New Normal
The New Normal.
You likely have heard this term used a lot recently as it relates to the post-COVID world. Will temperature checks be required before going on a plane or into a building? Will masks become part of our everyday fashion? Will our favorite brick-and-mortar stores be closed forever? Will telework be more widely accepted? Will you reach into a community bowl of potato chips ever again?
While there has been a focus on how the world might change, there hasn’t been a lot of talk on how we as individuals might change. If you’re like me, then part of being busy, of being out and about in the world, is trying to not have to sit with your thoughts, because let’s be honest, our minds can be horrific places to visit. But quarantine has forced some deep introspection out of me. How many real friendships do I have that don’t revolve around sports? Why do I feel so lonely? Why is trying to communicate with people online about serious topics so difficult? Am I where I want to be in life? Am I a good father? Is ordering more IHOP pancakes through DoorDash really a good idea?
These are definitely not IHOP pancakes.
And this: am I doing my best?
Here in America, it’s Independence Day, the Fourth of July, when we explode cheap fireworks that cost too much and overcook meat on the grill and, in a pre-COVID world, spend hours in miserable heat watching people we don’t know parade by. Technically, we’re celebrating our independence from our English parents, but I like to think of it as when the thirteen colonies decided, in a distinctly drunken American voice, “We can do better! We must do better!”
And today, Independence Day 2020, I’m saying I must do better, too.
I’ve been writing for over a decade, but other than a half-hearted attempt to get my terrible first novel published, I haven’t really put myself out there. But as I’ve spent day after day with my three-year-old daughter as she tries to be her best self - learning to potty on your own is very difficult, am I right? - I realized one of the things I owe her is for her to see me trying to be my best self, too, and that’s one who keeps reaching for his dreams, even when it feels his arms are too short.
If you’ve visited this site before, you’ll see I revamped it. Hopefully, it looks better. Hopefully, it’s more mobile friendly. But most of all, hopefully you’ll see me committed to this work. I plan on posting a new blog at least once a week. I plan on posting on my Instagram microwriting account (@azelisonpoet) 3-4 times a week. I plan on submitting to literary magazines often and I plan on finishing at least two of the five books I’m writing in the next year.
While the world doesn’t know what the New Normal looks like, as individuals, we can decide what our New Normal is going to be. The same old, same old? Or better?
I hope you’ll join me.