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Last thought from Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan as seen through the lens of infertility. The main character—Ava—teaches English in Hong Kong. The children are doing a unit on category nouns (vegetables) vs. exact nouns (broccoli), and they’re having problems filling out a worksheet. They are provided with category nouns and asked to fill in exact nouns.

The category noun is people, and the child asks what she should give as the exact nouns: sister or brother, teacher or doctor? The child points out that there are other related category nouns, such as family or profession. If she puts those exact nouns under “people,” what should she put under those other category nouns?

Ava realizes how difficult it is to describe a person without using how they earn money (or spend time) or their relationship to others (boyfriend, wife, mother, grandfather, friend).

She muses on the simplicity of the exact noun of apple vs. being someone’s nemesis as well as exact nouns that stand (albeit for a short period of time) on their own: adult, child, or teenager. On page 229 she writes:

An apple would still be a fruit if it didn’t have any others in its vicinity, but you couldn’t be someone’s nemesis without their hanging around to complete the definition … I still found it depressing that the way we specified ourselves—the way we made ourselves precise and interesting—was by pinpointing our developmental stage and likely distance from mortality. Fruit didn’t have that problem.

It’s a strange thought that you can be something (a mother) but if no one can see your child (miscarried), you can’t use the exact noun without explanation. Apples get to be apples whether they are rotted or ripe, chopped up or whole. They’re just an apple. But our exact noun can be taken away or never acknowledged by others at all.

This article on understanding the pandemic and surge capacity captured everything I’ve been feeling. The definition:

Surge capacity is a collection of adaptive systems — mental and physical — that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations, such as natural disasters. But natural disasters occur over a short period, even if recovery is long. Pandemics are different — the disaster itself stretches out indefinitely.

In other words, the energy we’re using to power ourselves is the type of energy that lends itself well to quick crises. But we’re using it to power ourselves long-term. Like six months and counting long-term. It’s hard to renew that kind of energy because there is no downtime or escape from the pandemic except to pretend that it doesn’t exist. (And we know how well that goes…)

The article has sound advice. While I’ve heard it all before, I think the opening did a lot to frame why the advice is important.

Are you taking care of yourself? And what does that even mean?

It went about as well as you thought a staycation would go. We ended up taking care of things. The first day, I got three hours of alone time (the first since April!) and then discovered my car battery died and needed to be replaced. We discovered Josh’s phone wasn’t charging and needed to be replaced. I dropped an entire bowl of waffle batter on the floor, and it sprayed everywhere in the kitchen. I spent a lot of time desperate to tune out and read a book, but unable to find a silent spot. I checked in on work things every day. I cooked. I cleaned.

We also managed to get to the beach for the day. We peed as many times as we could before we left the house, drove to the nearest beach town, parked in a random lot and bypassed the boardwalk by walking through a neighbourhood. People kept their distance on the sand, leaving about 12 feet around each set of chairs. We wore our masks whenever we stood up to walk to the water’s edge. We had five hours on the sand.

It was lovely. And it was scary. I couldn’t fully enjoy it because I felt so overwhelmed being around people, even though everyone kept a respectful distance. (But what if they didn’t? I needed to be alert and watchful.) I kept waiting for something to go wrong. When it didn’t go wrong, I was relieved but also exhausted from worrying. It was a wonderful treat, and it was completely depressing at the same time.

I’m not sure it’s possible to take a true staycation right now; not if we’re cautious and therefore still need to take care of all the day-to-day things such as cooking. But it’s also because we’re at home, there’s no reason not to take care of things. Meaning, if we were away, we would have dealt with the dead battery or phone at another point. But we weren’t away, so we dealt with them in the moment.

I guess I’m ending the staycation feeling like it was a weekend more than it was a true break. Which is… fine. I mean, we’re enormously lucky to still be working, and I love what I do. Our kids are semi-self-sufficient. We’re healthy. Maybe it’s just a reminder that I need to do a better job setting firm limits and carving out downtime for myself. Or maybe I’m just better being ensconced in work than I am not doing things when I’m in the house.

We’re nearing six months into the pandemic, and it’s not going away any time soon. I either need to do better about holding time sacred, or I need to just admit that breaks aren’t completely helpful for me right now.

Another thought from Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan intersected with how I’ve been using Instagram. With the exception of a few family members, I only follow tourism sites, such as Visit Wales, Visit Scotland, and Tourisme Bretagne. It means my feed is filled with pictures of the ocean because all of the areas I love are connected to water. Even when I can’t be at the ocean, I can be at the ocean.

In the book, one of the characters—Edith—takes a picture before she eats anything while they’re out. She says on page 120:

Another day we got croissants and she said something in Cantonese, then translated—”Camera eats first”—as I made to pick mine up. That made me smile. I liked when she was unapologetically earnest about things, even if it was the angle of a pastry. She said Instagram made her look at everything more closely. Whenever she felt sad, she had a wall of happy memories to look back on.

Instagram with its water pictures is my wall of happy memories right now, even if they’re not my memories. I’m looking at other people’s pictures of places I’ve been and places I haven’t gone yet. It makes me happy to see so much water and the occasional rock stack or two.

I mentioned Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan in the July book roundup, and I really loved what it had to say about relationships and learning about yourself. But it also had an economic thread running through the book. The main character is middle class. The two relationships are both upper class.

The way money plays into our idea of adulthood came up in the book and a newsletter at the exact same time. Or, I guess, I was reading both at the same time. In the book, Dolan writes on page 31:

Staying in his flat was possibly a rupture from the capitalist notion that I was only worth something if I paid my own way economically.

And then in the newsletter,

We talk to therapist Jordan Pickell, who notes that many of us have grown up with the idea that independence is the greatest marker of success: Can we live alone? Pay for things alone? Take care of ourselves? Write a book and make it popular on our own? But the healthiest adults are those who are interdependent, supporting the people they love and allowing themselves to be supported in return.

It seemed especially fitting right now, during COVID-19, because almost everyone needs some help, whether it is literally day-to-day aid, unemployment money, or simply that segments of life—such as childcare—continue as normal so you can take care of the things you need to take care of.

It’s such a bizarre idea when you step back from it. How did we decide that paying your own way made you a grown up vs. having the emotional maturity to treat people well and contribute to society? Certainly in other times in history (and in other cultures right now), your worth isn’t determined by what you can buy or the amount of money you earn. Your ability to pay for things. It’s all about contributions. Are you playing your role? Are you keeping the community moving forward together?

It was food for thought.