Author Jen Hatmaker has a podcast that I listen to occasionally. Early on she began asking each guest the same question at the end of the show, ‘What is saving your life right now?’ She credits Barbara Brown Taylor with giving her the idea for using that question. Last year, Barbara Brown Taylor came to Lemuria for a book signing and on-stage conversation that my friend and pastor, Lesley Ratcliff, facilitated. Towards the end of the evening, Lesley turned the question from Jen’s podcast on Barbara who responded with, ‘Are y’all familiar with John Claypool?’ She got a more exuberant response than she might have expected because the room was chock full of members of Northminster Baptist Church and Claypool was our pastor in the late 70s.
Since he is considered one of our nation’s most gifted preachers—we are real familiar with him. After Lesley explained why a bunch of folks in Jackson, Mississippi were so quick to lay claim to him, Taylor said she had gotten the question that Hatmaker credits her with from Claypool. I have always enjoyed hearing Jen’s guests’ answers on her podcast; but this revelation and connection to my church made me fall in love with the question.
What is saving your life right now? Sometimes I know exactly how I would answer; other times I can’t quite grasp what I think ‘saving your life’ means. I suppose this depends on how much I need saving at any given moment. Obviously, it shouldn’t be taken literally—especially right now when the answer to a literal interpretation would be, ‘Washing my hands, Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, and staying home.’
I prefer a more poetic or figurative interpretation like, ‘What is saving you from wasting your life right now?’ Or, ‘What is saving you from not paying attention in your life right now?’ It’s like those poets Roger Murrah and Randy VanWarmer of the band Alabama told us all back in 1992, ‘I'm in a hurry to get things done/Oh I rush and rush until life's no fun/All I really gotta do is live and die/But I'm in a hurry and don't know why.’
Now that everyone who’s ever heard that song will have it firmly stuck in their heads for the rest of the day—I knew why I was in a hurry. Roger and Randy may not have known why they were; but in my pre-COVID life I was completely aware of why I was in a hurry. I have four children, fifth grade and younger and if I didn’t hurry then we wouldn’t make it to anything—the stuff we had to do or the stuff we enjoyed doing. And it doesn’t matter how hard you try—there is no such thing as a life where those two things are always the same. I think the combination of doing what you enjoy more often and enjoying the things you have to do is probably the secret to living a contented life—it’s figuring out how to do those things that’s the tricky part. But I’m still in a hurry and now I’m with Roger and Randy—I don’t know why.
It’s been hard for me to feel like I’m doing more than surviving this quarantine life of limited social interaction, traditions I love being changed, and routines I depended on being taken away all while living under the cloud of not knowing when it will end or how it will change us forever. For most of us, this new life involves (at least for now) less of the things we have to do and more time for the things we enjoy—but I’m still in a hurry to get things done.
I keep finding myself rushing my kids through our ‘distance learning’ assignments and chores like we have somewhere to be. This is partly out of habit but it feels like more than that. It’s like I think if I can hurry through the things this new life has assigned to us, then I can get us back to our ‘regular life’ sooner. You’d think I struck a deal that says the faster I race through the parts of my life that the quarantine has changed then the sooner the virus will slow down and those parts will go back to normal. I don’t know who made me think I was in charge of dealmaking with this virus for the whole world; but I don’t think it’s working. My one-sided deal to hurry—isn’t slowing anything down.
While rushing through my life isn’t saving anybody, there are some things saving me from myself. Things that make me lift my head up from whatever task I’m rushing to finish and pay attention, things that make my shoulders come down from my ears a little and my brain take a break from unconsciously trying to figure out how to fix everything. Here are the things that are saving my life right now:
Hair Makeup. My oldest daughter colored a streak of her hair with a blue Sharpie while on a school Zoom meeting and her fingers were blue for days. I told her I would buy her an actual hair color product if she promised not to do that again. I bought blue, purple, and hot pink, so they look like wannabe cast members of the Disney movie ‘The Descendants,’ but it washes out with one wash. Earning ‘fun mom’ status for a bit is saving my life right now.
Memes and Group Texts. I hope everybody has gotten to enjoy the wealth of COVID-19 memes, gifs, and videos that abound on the internet these days. The hysterical souls that I am lucky enough to call my friends and be on group texts with have managed to keep me in quarantine, reluctant homeschooling, and stay-at-home humor daily. Perfectly timed texts that make me laugh are saving my life right now.
Toddy Walks and Driveway Talks. Every few days, I’ll meet up with my neighbor to go for a socially distanced walk with a drink in hand. We walk on opposite sides of the road, or close to it, and make our way towards another neighbor and talk while standing in a equilateral triangle in her yard. Pre-COVID, I didn’t know that after a long day of faking it as a teacher and taking deep breaths so you don’t yell at your kids (again,) that having a glass of wine in your friend’s driveway was as beneficial to your mental health as the best therapy money could buy. Realizing that this stupid virus has taught how much I value time with my friends is saving my life right now.
Group FaceTime. It feels like magic that with the tap of a button I can invite a group text of school mom friends or my sisters and my parents or in-laws into my kitchen. Since my sisters live in California and D.C. this probably should have felt more magical all along, but now that my kids can’t go see their grandparents around the corner or just across town anymore—it feels like a gift that is saving my life right now.
Camping Kids. My kids have spent the last two nights in a tent in our backyard. All four of them. All night. Without bloodshed. It’s a dadgum miracle. We set them up with a movie on the iPad (don’t judge me, camping purists) and flashlights and sleeping bags and pillows galore and they actually stayed in there all night, both nights. Who knows when we would have found time to give this a go in our ‘normal life?’ But in this strange quarantine life—it was just a regular Thursday night activity. Kids camping in the backyard is a miracle that’s saving my life right now.
Lower Beauty Standards. And, okay, Hygiene Standards, too. Other than the terrifying fact that I will probably have to let my husband highlight my hair sometime soon, I am enjoying never putting on real clothes or makeup these days. It doesn’t matter what clothes my kids wear—except for daughter #3 who has been given a wardrobe change limit until she is prepared to take on all laundry duties. While we are trying really hard to make them at least brush their teeth and bathe daily—we look like a bunch of ragamuffins and I’m okay with it. Feral children and workout pants are saving my life right now.
Cathead Distillery. Please tell me what’s not to love about a vodka and bourbon distillery switching gears in about a week to start producing hand sanitizer which they give away for free to anyone with a 12-ounce container? They are hoping to recoup their costs, at best, from selling it to organizations that can pay for it; so pick up a bottle of Honeysuckle vodka or Old Soul Bourbon some time to say thank you. Local businesses finding innovative ways to help their communities are saving my life right now.
Zoom. My oldest daughter’s teachers use this online meeting app to keep teaching her every day and my middle daughter used it today to see all her classmates’ faces for the first time since before Spring Break. My pastors use it to read books to the kids of our church every Wednesday during a half hour that I hope lasts beyond the quarantine called, ‘Storytime with the Pastors.’ The pixilated faces and echoey voices of so many people I love are saving my life right now.
This is far from a complete list. When I’m in the thick of school at the kitchen table, breakfast dishes in the sink, lunch on the horizon, dirt and grass and dog hair on the floor, and a mountain of laundry tall enough to convince me that I will, in fact, just do laundry and make ham sandwiches over and over until I die—it takes a lot to make me look up and pay attention to the kid who is admiring her pink hair and the other one who is buoyant after seeing her friends on Zoom, or see the text from friends who left donuts on my doorstep just to start my Saturday off in the sweetest way. But the life-savers are there, saving me from myself even as I start eyeing the hair makeup and my roots and wondering if I should go with purple or blue.
Elizabeth Quinn makes her home in Northeast Jackson with her husband Percy and four children.
