My natural response when life gives me rhetorical lemons is to make lemonade.
I constantly give people the benefit of the doubt or joyfully spin negative developments with a positive twist.
When I lost a race for State Representative on the day before my thirtieth birthday I cheerfully announced that I’d, “come in second place!”
So it shouldn’t have surprised me when I started justifying how, if the coronavirus quarantine had to happen, this was the perfect time (in my life) for it to happen.
As I compared my current life circumstances to past situations, an extremely compelling argument emerged almost tricking me into being thankful for the global pandemic.
It started as an attempt to cheer myself up that my fourteen-month-old daughter Senita was missing Easter celebrations at my church and with my family.
I thought, “wow, I’m glad this didn’t happen last year so that the Rona tinges every ‘baby’s first’ memory: Baby’s first Easter, baby’s first walk through the neighborhood, baby’s first trip to the playground.”
Indeed, we even would have missed the library and town programs where we met other kids her age and started building a small community of other parents in the area.
Then I wondered if it would’ve been better to be on lockdown before we had kids. We’d be considerably more well-rested throughout the quarantine, but perhaps lacking that all-consuming focus that helps keep us centered.
Caring for a rapidly-developing baby provides tangible growth and value to our day-to-day existence that many others seem to be lacking from their comments throughout the spring.
Then I imagined the darker scenarios, like if this had happened when we had larger uncertainties in our lives like long-term unemployment, or the frustrating gap we had between renting a house and closing on a house of our own, or near the end of Mom’s life when she was so frail and tensions and anxieties were already so high.
That’s the point at which, like a needle scratching across a record, I stopped.
I’m not spinning my version of events to make it seem like this global pandemic is a blessing in disguise.
It’s ok to acknowledge when a situation absolutely sucks.
I learned this a few years back when I was rear-ended at a dead stop while traveling with my fiance and two brothers to my uncle’s funeral. We were hit so hard our car was totaled at a time and location sufficient enough to cause us all to miss the remembrance.
As always, my initial impulse was to make lemonade. It started with sayings like, “what really matters is nobody was badly hurt,” and “cars can be replaced,” but immediately fell flat.
We were kept (through no fault of our own) from helping our cousins grieve their father’s loss; no amount of sugar will ever mix away how much that sucks.
I’m not sure why I’m compelled to try justifying bad things in a positive light.
It is a coping strategy I recognized in my mother, the only person I’ve ever known to fall into an abusive relationship with a cat.
Mom shrugged off the claw-spaced scabs the way I’m suddenly shrugging off wearing a face mask to go grocery shopping. The common thread is that neither are accepted in a normal, healthy world.
Throughout this pandemic, I’ve seen a lot of stories about people who are faring far worse than me from the pandemic (they’re impossible to avoid). Every time I see one, I immediately empathize with their struggles and then force myself to be grateful that’s not my story.
It’s a strange fascination that makes about as much sense as walking into a singles bar just to find other guys who are uglier than you so you can say “at least I’m not that guy” as solace from loneliness.
The truth is that I know lots of people who are living lives of various complexity right now.
An Aunt who can’t visit her mother in the nursing home, a cousin and several friends who gave birth while the virus raged inside their hospitals, those who are happily self-quarantining, and those who are unable or unwilling to keep themselves at home.
Everybody has been rear-ended by some sort of obstacle they didn’t see coming. Our experiences won’t be made any easier or better by comparing them against each other.
Turning lemons into lemonade is a wonderful, appropriate thing to do. Even if for no other reason than it means you’re acknowledging that you’ve been given lemons and avoiding the sweet temptation of denial.
But, sometimes lemonade is made just a little bit too sour, or a little bit too sweet, or with a whole bunch of booze mixed in.
However you choose to mix your lemonade, don’t get stuck following someone else’s recipe; for the duration of this pandemic, give yourself permission to flavor it to your taste.
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