Beautiful and Terrible

Here is the world. I am trying to be brave.

Frederich Buechner said, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”

Today I fixed my dryer. I had help, my ten year old held the flash light and reminded me of what the guy on YouTube said, by the time I’d walked from the computer to the dryer I’d forgotten. I’m not used to fixing things. When I was a kid, we called the guy. “The T.V. is fuzzy, call the guy! The toilet is running, call the guy! The dryer won’t dry, call the guy for sure!” No one in my family daned to fix something as complicated and expensive as a dryer. But in their defense, they didn’t have YouTube.

I’m no better than my parents in this regard, I’ve never tried to fix a dryer before, and without the Coronavirus terrifying me from the laundromat, and from inviting “the guy,” a stranger, where whom has been I do not know, I never would have tried. But from now on, I will look on YouTube before, “the guy” is summoned. This was a beautiful thing.

You’re fully aware of the terrible these past few weeks, people are getting sick and dying, the guy who wrote Stacy’s Mom is gone, it’s hard to believe. I love that song and from what I’ve read, people really loved him. There will be more, so many more and we don’t know who? If I let myself get started on kids without lunches, and people in abusive homes, I’ll never come out of the rabbit hole.

Both of my daughters had terrible coughs and and I wasn’t sure what it was until the antibiotics worked. It took 5 days, it was frightening in spite of their doctor telling me they had bronchitis. Friend’s have lost jobs and their businesses have closed. They have no income and no clue when they will resume working. Family members, who shouldn’t be, are leaving their homes to shop and breathe until maybe they can’t. There is plenty of terrible.

But today I fixed a dryer. I unplugged it and climbed behind it while my daughter held the light. We had to unhook the silver slinky thingy and take out the metal cylindrical thingy and then I pushed a button which was exactly where the YouTube repairman said it would be.

“You’ll hear it click,” he promised and I did. Nothing has sounded as satisfying since I heard the first cry of my newborns. It’s drying our clothes again; a beautiful thing.

Since we’ve been on house arrest, my girls are in the same home. They are 10 years apart so when my older daughter left for college, that was the end of them growing up together but they are under one roof again. They fight over who sets and who clears, they are sharing a bathroom and their parent’s attention and getting all that good (and bad) stuff you get from living with a sister. They are no longer 2 only-children and at this age and stage, they like each other.

My husband is working from home. He is a hard worker. Harder now that people have more need. He shuts the door of my office at 7:30 comes out for recess and lunch, then not again until 6 or later. I don’t know if he knew an economics degree would be the least of the things he would need to do his job as a financial advisor. A degree in psychology my have been more practical, and marriage counseling and suicide prevention, but he has found that he is good at all of it. He has a new zest for his business. He wouldn’t say this. He’d say, ”It’s tough out there.” Both things are true.

It is the beginning of the month so if you are an aspiring writer, trying to get published, this is the time you receive rejections. I imagine I will receive an acceptance at the beginning of some month, some time, maybe soon. So far I get a lot of rejections. Some are form letters, some are kind, some even say they like my work. What they don’t say is, “Congratulations!” Most of the months I’ve gotten these, it has been kind of a thrill. I’m a new writer so just the fact that someone has read what I wrote is exciting.

I’ve heard you get a lot of ‘no’s’ before the yes’ begin, so the rejections have felt like a rite of passage, thus placing them in the beautiful category. But now there is terror in the world, and illness and fear so great, I wake up some nights in a cold sweat and not because I’m in my fifties. Pure fear has gripped me when I wasn’t cooking for my family or walking my dog or doing laundry, so much laundry!

The rejections this month felt like salt in a wound, I know that is a cliche and maybe that is one of the reasons I haven’t been published lately but sometimes, only what’s been said before will do. Like Mr. Buechner. How right he was.

So on the first of the month, when my little girl was still coughing like a seal barking, longer than one would think possible before breathing was necessary, I got 2 rejections in my email and I lost it. It was 5 in the afternoon but the terror took hold and all the thoughts reserved for 3 in the morning came forth, What if we loose someone we love? Will we be able to feed our family? Can our generation, so spoiled and entitled until now, survive a pandemic; a depression? There was a lot of self loathing and judgment as well, Who do I think I am with this artist stuff? Didn’t I learn my lesson when I tried to be an actress? Why would anyone want to read what I have to say? Whether the fear was enhancing the rejection or the opposite, I can’t say but both were real and frightening and miserable.

To stave off the terrible, I leashed the husky and walked and walked and walked. I smelled the rain-cleaned air and looked at the mountains rising from the man-made lake near my home, then some friends drove by. A couple I’ve known for years, and not-for-nothing, our family’s clergy. They slowed their car a safe distance from me and said,”How’s it going?”

“Great,” I told them and the tears sprung. Normally I would have been so embarrassed. The poor couple was on their way home from the market, a harrowing experience for anyone these days, their work is consoling people, and now they were clocking in on a day off. So I’m not sure why I felt no shame other than lack of bandwidth. There just wasn’t room.

They pulled their car over and sat a little more than 6 feet from me on the curb. The rabbi actually sat down in the street. It wasn’t busy and most people weren’t driving that day but still. I can’t remember the last time someone who doesn’t rely on me to cook their meals, gave me that kind of compassion. I was so grateful, there was little to say. I just sniffed and cried and they sat and let me and remarkably I felt better. It took less than 10 minutes.

I texted them when I got home, “I’m not sure if it was the clergy in you or the friends in you that made you sit in the street with me, but either way it is much appreciated.”

My friend wrote back, “Friends. Clergy don’t let their sweats get dirty in the road.”

So dear Buechner, there it is, a new skill, sick children, hunger, dry clothes, death, rejection, and an act of friendship that quelled despair. Beautiful and terrible, just as you said it would be.

Here is the world. I am trying to be brave.