Reflection: Where Was I on Previous Days Like This One?
Should we expect this Friday the 13th to be as awful as the year in which it arrives? Although I typically dismiss the usual hype when Friday the 13th wakens with us, this one has significance. It is a year of pandemic, economic fallout, lives lost, businesses failed, and the end of the worst administration in USA history, the cause of much of our collective suffering. 2020 not only symbolically sucks; 2020 literally is the year of crisis upon crisis. I wonder what I was doing on other days like this.
I was just three days in Anchorage, Alaska on Friday, August 13, 1971. Having married on the previous Saturday, I was not only a newlywed teenager but also away for home for the first time in my life. Instead of going to university like a few of my friends did or joining the military to become a nurse during the US war in Vietnam like not one of my girlfriends did, I married the first boyfriend I ever had. I remember the extreme loneliness, learning how to keep the trailer house clean, watching endless hours of television—Sonny and Cher Show was particularly enjoyable---and fascinating myself with small discoveries on my walks around the neighborhood and into the forest. Children ice skated up and down our street.
On Friday, July 13, 1973 I would have been huge in belly. Maureen thrived inside me, due in only one month. The loneliness didn’t change much. If dear friends are made in strong proportion to one’s commitment to church and selfless service, I wasn’t experiencing the math. I knew it was me even then. We were in Ohio, living with the Heck family who pastored the church that sponsored our summer “internship” away from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri. I helped with housework and sometimes accompanied the church service on piano. But I was the minister-in-training's wife and was given no chance to develop any worthwhile contributions. In truth, we were there because my young husband could not make a decent living in Springfield, a smallish town with several colleges. It was also the summer of Watergate Congressional hearings. I watched them with mild curiosity. But looking back on it, the hard questioning and the tough confessions must have triggered something in my young absolutist brain.
On Friday, August 13, 1982 we were already ostracized by dearest friends in the church for which we had made life-changing commitment and sacrifices for nearly eight years. Although I was only twenty-nine years old, I was living an old woman’s, last-days mindset. I loved the entire area between Wilmington and Philadelphia. It was a time of personal growth as I explored an unfamiliar culture but, my movements and ability to establish relationships outside the church were severely hampered. When we were given notice that we were banned from the church and the members, I was alone again. I cannot even imagine now how my loneliness and hurt affected my two little daughters, Maureen and Andrea. I tried to distract them with summer activities, as much as we could afford. I would later write and talk about my involvement in a religious cult and the traumatizing events that led to our escape in the Fall of 1982.
On Friday, September 13, 1991 I was enjoying Jessica, about six weeks old then. There was much to rejoice in. I earned my Baccalaureate the previous Spring. Just a few more classes in pedagogy and I would be an independent earner very soon. I could leave Roy, New Mexico behind. Although other career paths had from time to time enticed me, I chose education because it was a quicker and less expensive path to becoming independent. Maureen would soon also give birth. I couldn’t help but be happy for her even though I knew that starting parenthood as a single young woman would be very difficult. I wished then as now that my own situation had been more financially stable so that we could have offered her more help than we did. Andrea was still in high school. I had three daughters. Then as now I could not have felt deeper love and pride in them. When we left the religious cult in 1982, I promised myself then that I would fight for my independence from religion and dogma, from poverty and marital subjugation, and teach my daughters how to earn their independence as well. We would do this together. Perhaps daughters should have a mother who is prepared and steady before becoming a parent; I was not but, I wouldn’t let that prevent our learning together.
Fast forward to Friday, November 13, 2020 and hearing from our governor that New Mexico would have to go into another mandated lockdown of sorts. Hospitalizations and deaths from the novel coronavirus are increasing at a fast rate. We have curtailed most of our regular activities since last March. But this third surge across our nation is the result of a willful mishandling of the pandemic response by a terrible administration and the political party that enables it. Nearly ¼ million Americans have died already; nearly ½ million are expected to die before the next administration takes over on January 20, 2021. This is an unbelievably shameful time in our nation’s history. I imagine on December 7 and 8 of 1942, that our nation felt a collective shock and sadness borne of a malicious deadly surprise attack. I know that we felt a collective shock and sadness on September 11, 2001. This is different. We are mired in the collective shock of feeling helpless and angry and lonely and shamed. While most countries with whom we compare in wealth and healthcare seem to combat the pandemic with national resolve and win their battles against this horrid virus, we stand alone as a nation that has given in to the deadly virus.
This blog is more personal than I want my writing to be. But I’ll publish this one anyway. At my age the urge to leave gifts behind seems far wise than the urges to hide history and life-lessons learned. Writings are gifts. I hope there is something in this blog that touches another woman and helps her become a better, stronger person.