Well…it’s been a motherf***er of a year. Many of us feel that we can’t complain about it unless we got Covid, lost someone we loved to it, or are on the health care front lines. But we have to talk about it. We have to. However we are affected by this global pandemic, I know that if we don’t talk about it, whine about it, rage against it, beat it with a broom, laugh in its face, thank it the way you thank a robber for cleaning you of your “greed”…we won’t learn from it.

I tried the non-complaining approach for months. I mean, a lot of good has happened in my life due to the pandemic. My kids came home. I had a full house. We have memories we’d never have if it weren’t for the quarantine— we called it “one long spring break.” I mean, there was a beer pong table set up on my lawn all summer, after all. I learned to make sourdough bread like everyone else. I’ve been able to offer writing workshops online. My book became a bestseller regardless of a cancelled book tour. See…there I go. Glass-half-fulling it. It’s not my nature to lead with anger. I run optimistic as a rule, and not because I’m forcing it. It’s just more comfortable to me to be positive and grateful. But in the last months I’ve taken to a weird form of mental abuse, muttering things out of nowhere and for no apparent reason and to no one like, “Okay! FIIINE!” or “Leave me ALONE, okay?!” or “I’m TRYING!” or “Give me a freaking BREAK!” Maybe I’m speaking to Covid itself? Likely so. I catch myself kicking rocks down the driveway on my daily walk. Hard.

Like Covid is a squatting, rotting, uninvited fish-guest in my house and I don’t quite know how to ask it to leave.

So I just rage at it. It actually seems to like the abuse, because no matter how angry I get at it…it…just…won’t…leave.

And it’s not just in my house. It’s in every conversation I have. Weird stuff comes out of my mouth. Weird stuff comes out of other people’s mouths too. Stuff like, “We need to clean the kitchen ceiling.” If there was a script, we’re way off it and I wonder if we’ll come back. A few generations ago, our world was in the same sort of sucker punch. But we had Bob Hope and the Andrews Sisters. Now we have the Tiger King. And Minecraft. And Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani. And legal weed. No wonder people are watching a TV series about a woman playing chess. No wonder we’re bragging about our sourdough starter. It’s the only thing left to brag about. Well, that, and our “nice” pair of pajamas.

So, in this winding up of 2020, I say, let it rip! Let’s hereby BITCH about this last year. Just for one solid jaunt, grab it like that baseball bat your uncle wielded at your seventh birthday party when the pinata wouldn’t break, and have at it. Bash that paper mache pink pony until it falls off its noose and its treacly guts splatter all over the garage floor. Let’s do it before the year ends! Let’s do it as the days get longer and lighter. Let’s shake off 2020 in the most emotionally aggressive (but not violent) way. Every bit of scum that’s built up behind our ears and under our arms and inside our cerebral cortexes, and that dreadlock that won’t brush out because of all the sitting in your bed. To that end, the bed sores. Let’s take whatever’s left of your bi-ceps and punch this sucker right back! Especially if you run on the kind side of things…let’s bash this thing bloody. Just for a few minutes. We’ll call it sacred rage.

Let’s get it out of our systems and walk into 2021…new. Even if 2021 is a lot like 2020, or somehow worse (please, God, no!), at least we will have done some decent due diligence in the realm of rage. At least we will be purged enough to face whatever wants to fill our next footsteps.

I’ll go first.

• 30 year old dream comes true: got a novel published. March 2^nd. F*** me.

Big bounteous book tour on full steam—NYC, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis— needle scratch on vinyl record. Just kidding, West Coast and Rocky Mountain states. Sorry, summertime Eastern Seaboard. Turns out I need to go home, buy beans and rice, and get back into my bed, where I was for the last eight years, writing the damn book. TP? Meh. I have T-shirts I don’t like.

• Realize on the airplane home, after cancelling 38 events from coast to coast and in-between, that I also don’t have a little thing called a job. Like…who’s coming to Montana on a writing retreat when there’s a pandemic going on? Silver lining: I hung with the Delta finger wagging No Smoking lady. She’s a real live flight attendant! Got a photo with her. I was supposed to get a photo with like…scads of tan booklovers at the Martha’s Vineyard Yacht Club, with Mt. Gay and tonics in one hand and my novel in the other. But whatever.
• Get a cough. A dry cough. And a sore throat. And…like I can’t smell anything. And like…my eyes are pink and gooey. And like…I can’t stop coughing. And my body aches. I must just be worn out from all the travel. All the hugs and kisses and whispers in the ear and the breathing. And the Uber after Uber and the subway and more hugs and more kisses and more whispers in the ear and chummy, close-up photo poses. Montana had very few Covid tests in March. I thought it correct form to leave them for the healthcare workers. I was already in my bed anyway. What’s five more weeks, supine? Saving Grace: A friend gave me Thieves cough lozenges at my first gig in NYC: “They used these to ward off the Bubonic Plague in the 1600s, so just in case it gets bad out there on the road.” I highly recommend them.
• Get a rejection from the New Yorker for an essay I didn’t submit. Nor write. Awesome!
• Whilst driving a country road, the hood of my car suddenly flies back, full throttle, against my windshield. I mean…is that a thing??? We lived. The hood didn’t. Bonus points: The tow truck guy knows me by my first name. “Which rig is it this time, Laura?”
• In similar news: my 2002 Suburban, the one that the kids were little in, the one that drove sophomoric soccer stars and local baseball legends over the Continental Divide for tournament after tournament, the one that serves as my utility truck and my son’s transportation when he’s home…finally gives up. But after I sink almost 2k into it and buy brand new tires for winter driving safety. “That thing’ll run forever. I’ve seen Chevy trucks with 300,000 miles on them,” sayeth the mechanic. Turns out he’s a ‘splainer-sayer, not a soothsayer.
• And forget about basic human interaction, even at six feet apart. My hearing sucks and it turns out that I read lips more than I knew I did. And with reading glasses on top of a mask, it’s all one big foggy mess. So it’s get in and get out. Fast. Put it this way: I’m the one who corners you in the grocery store and wants to know all about the hardest thing in your life. While you’re trying to buy broccoli and your kid has a dirty diaper. Lo, there are relieved people all over Whitefish, Montana.
• Speaking of the election: My 88 year-old mother falls on her way into the voting booth, and breaks her arm. Then gets UP, and says to all of City Hall, (in some iteration—I’ve heard it at least three different ways) “I came here to vote and I’m going to vote! Even though I’m crossing party lines this time! Devil be damned!” Votes. Then drives herself to the ER, shifting with her left hand. So that explains 75% of my personality. Like so many of our elders she’s alone for all the holidays, in Skilled Nursing. No visitors. PS: Don’t tell her but some Christmas elves are going to surprise her on Christmas Eve outside her window with some holiday cheer…
• Seriously…politics. Not going there. But whatever that all was…I’m just glad it’s over. And did we really need all the license plate-sized, expensive, nasty campaign flyers? I made a huge heart out of them on my front lawn in case aliens wanted to know if there was still love on the planet earth. There is. Just didn’t feel like it when you turned on the news all year.
• What else? Oh yeah. My computer broke and I lost half of a pretty good novel. Yup. And my email still doesn’t work right. So I miss things. Little things like…“Would you like to be our $keynote$ speaker?”
• And then the Christmas tree falls down. Twice. My grandmother’s favorite ornament, that she so carefully curated, and me too, smashed to smithereens. And a glass globe that my son painted in 1^st grade with his little sweet handprint on it for all of eternity— bah-bye. A million little sharp glass pieces all over the living room. I cut my foot on one of them. Symbolism: My favorite ornament, a red blown glass heart that I got in Italy, broke in half but didn’t fall. So I left it right where it was, up next to the star. Because… 2020. Part of me was like…just leave the damn tree lying on the floor. The lights still work.
• And there’s this weird mole on my chest. That itches. Gotta get that checked out. And that colonoscopy I’m due for… No appointments until 2021. So no luck on the deductible. At least I have some things to look forward to!
• Not doing a #13. I’m not superstitious but…

There were good things too. Great things. But that’s not what this is for. This is for shedding it all so there’s room to bring in the new. And I must say…that felt good. BUT it was hard. Every single bit of rant felt like it needed to be somehow justified by some sort of silver lining.

And I wonder…if the bright side can stay bright without the dark side to remind it of what it is.

And always will be. Because I believe in the bright side. So there. But 2020…you really sucked. Thank you, then, for your service. We’re probably better for you, somehow. At least we can dream.

To all of you who lost anything this year, which is all of us, especially to those of you who lost loved ones: here is a huge, up-close-and-personal written-from-my-heart HUG and a KISS and a whisper in your EAR: It’s gonna be okay. It just is. We have to believe that it really is.

I’m going to go watch It’s a Wonderful Life now and bawl my eyes out. Happy holidays to you, even if it’s a small light in your small window. Savor it.

Love from Montana,

Laura

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