Looks Like We Made It

I’ve seen Barry Manilow in concert three times and I’m not ashamed to admit it. His songs are the tunes of my youth that take me back to when my parents had parties in our wood paneled basement with the pleather recliner and vinyl topped bar. The kids played outside, having been banished from the split level house while the grown ups were inside living their best life. We’d swing on the metal swing set, reaching high as the back leg of the playset creaked and precariously lifted out of the ground. We in fact tried to swing as high as we could to make that rickety metal pole teeter us into the joys of imbalance. Meanwhile, some other kids tried to cross the creek in our backyard without getting their Keds wet, the older ones elbowing their younger siblings as we hopped across green slimy rocks, inevitably splashing into the bottle green water. Mud streaked in our wake and caked under our nails. We drank RC Cola and Mr. Pibb and devoured tins of Charles Chips. We bickered, we wailed, we laughed. All the parents would be at the vinyl topped bar blasting Barry Manilow, smoking Vantage cigarettes, and drinking scotch, nary the wiser to our shenanigans.

Life wasn’t really all that safe in the 70s, yet we kids felt safe. We had each other, and our parents were parents to us all.

While the world hasn’t felt safe this year, we saw our own little community come together. People walked more and greeted each other from our stoops and front porches. We masked up and marched with neighbors. We shared protest sign supplies and staked Black Lives Matters signs in our yards. We volunteered together on election day. We shared our bounty with others. We drew messages of hope and encouragement with sidewalk chalk. And yes, we sipped Palomas on the porch, six feet apart. We looked out for each other. We made do. 

The world of 2020 won’t magically vanish at the stroke of midnight. Republicans keep GOPing on our country. Our Black and brown friends continue to face systemic racism and blatant hatred. The pandemic lurches forward with unstoppable momentum. The economy spirals downward. And our very planet is crumbling, its dust caked on our hands. A new year brings new hope and opportunities but a turn of the calendar page won’t erase what 2020 stirred. While we yearned for so much in 2020, it was safety we sought. The lucky among us found it within our own home, with our people. 

Mac Daddy and I tried ever so hard to maintain a safe and healthy home this year. We carried on structure the best we could with work and school (oh, what dark spots in this mess of a year). We indulged in movie nights with boxes of Junior Mints and Mike & Ike and binge watched Silicon Valley, Community, and yes, Tiger King. The boys ventured out to Dix Park where there’s room to roam and safely see friends. We took walks. So many walks. We saw friends on our gloriously large porch that has become our respite in these times of separated togetherness. Alas, there were no big parties or booming teenage voices and clomping large feet adding life to our four walls. Yet, we somehow managed to balance a bit of that teenage risk taking spirit with a sense of safety and security at the core of how we survived 2020. 

And I’m going to be honest here, most of the year was ugly around here. There’s no playbook for parenting in a pandemic, and we faked our can-do attitude, one of us hiding it better than the other. Our sons missed so damn much, making this year a long stream of mourning flowing into resentment. We blew on the tender dandelion and watched senior year milestones drift away. There is no end in sight, though the promise of herd immunity and a return to valuing science rise brightly before us. Through this shit show of a year, I threw out any semblance of thriving and hung on to surviving. Our one accomplishment was family dinners every single night. We all experimented in the kitchen and indulged in too much sugar. Sometimes those meals were eaten in enraged silence while others included loud jeers and angry outbursts. We are decidedly not Norman Rockwellesque models. But still, food was our semblance of safety. When all else was lost, when all tempers flared, we came together at the table. Ours is a table usually brimming with friends. This year, only our four seats were ever occupied, and tonight, on this last day of 2020, we’ll sit at that table to relish cheese fondue, overeat marshmallows dipped in chocolate fondue, and dream of gathering with friends and loved ones again. 

When all else fails, look to Barry. The oft misunderstood lyrics of that Barry Manilow song are actually mournful and ironic. On the surface, it’s an encouraging and uplifting song, but there’s an underlying melancholy. It looks like we made it, albeit apart, not together.