Uncertainty & Uncertain Times

In these days of the COVID 19 pandemic, as we all try to negotiate our days, all of which seem longer than before, I have been struggling.  At first, it was that I had so much to do that was pressing: finishing a yearbook remotely, with no activities or sports (I had 89 pages to go when the school year suddenly ended), learning how to use ZOOM and other platforms for communicating with students, navigating how to teach remotely, managing my six year old’s lessons and life while doing the other required things, negotiating my older children’s limited interest and commitment, and dealing with my son’s resentment and perpetual nagging about being “imprisoned in this house.” Now, with yearbook done and school reduced to a couple of days of online teaching and lots of grading, I have a little more “freedom” to think.  One of my students said yesterday (via ZOOM) that her problem was having more time to think, because then she thinks about things she did not usually have time to think about, and that is not always a good thing!

Late last week,  perhaps as a result of that kind of thinking, my children’s meanness, and weariness, I had a little  breakdown. I stood, tears streaming down my face, in my closet, crying out “No, no, no, no, no,” and pulling clothes off of hangers to throw away.  I don’t know what that was about, the clothes, other than that cleaning and organizing sometimes give me peace of mind, but I felt a little beyond crazy.  

Later that day, as I took a “recovery” walk, I realized what had struck me so forcefully.  There were many things that struck me, actually, but the one that stood out, the one that seemed the root of my dismay, is that uncertainty is its own kind of mental plague. 

During this period of “sheltering in place,” during this worldwide terrible pandemic, the dates have kept moving.  First, we were told we would be out of school until April 6, and that seemed an eternity. Then May 1. Then the rest of the school year.  Even that date seems tenuous now. I had just made the final payment on a cruise I had planned for my whole family for nearly a year just a few days before the school and then virtually everything closed, and now that is uncertain.  I have to wait for the cruise line to cancel the sailing, so I finished paying off my credit card and still have no idea what will happen. Even if the cruise line does not cancel the sailing, who wants to get on a cruise ship now? Or ever?  

Emily Dickinson, my favorite poet (long before the film and series), wrote a beautiful poem about this uncertainty.  Now hers seems to be about the uncertainty of a love’s arrival or return — to her — but I think it applies beautifully to the power of uncertainty on the human psyche. Here’s the whole poem:

If you were coming in the Fall,

I’d brush the Summer by

With half a smile, and half a spurn,

As Housewives do, a Fly.

If I could see you in a year,

I’d wind the months in balls—

And put them each in separate Drawers,

For fear the numbers fuse—

If only Centuries, delayed,

I’d count them on my Hand,

Subtracting, til my fingers dropped

Into Van Dieman’s Land,

If certain, when this life was out—

That yours and mine, should be

I’d toss it yonder, like a Rind,

And take Eternity—

But, now, uncertain of the length

Of this, that is between,

It goads me, like the Goblin Bee—

That will not state— its sting.

Dickinson notes that the length of time that separates us from this moment and the desired moment (right now that is when life will return to some semblance of normalcy) — the length of time itself is not the issue — it’s the NOT knowing.  If Dickinson’s speaker KNEW when her love would return to her — say in the fall — she could manage easily. She would just “brush the summer by…as Housewives do, a fly,” as if an entire summer was just an inconvenient waiting period. She hyperbolizes that she could wait for centuries and easily count those centuries down, if ONLY she knew that the time of waiting would end.  

The final stanza is the most thematic and telling.  The uncertainty of the “length of this, that is between,” this meaning time, “goads” her.  The uncertainty is the annoying thing, the painful thing, the awkward thing, the thing that occupies every moment of our time.  It is like a “Goblin Bee,” that hovers about and has not stung, but keeps warning us it may. She captures perfectly the waiting, and the anxiety of the unknown.  

We “advancing” people (of a certain age) are supposed to understand this better than our youth.  We are supposed to have some wisdom about this. But really, there is nothing in my lifetime that has prepared me for a national emergency situation like this.  One student asked me, as the rumor was spreading that officials might close the schools, “How many times have you been through something like this?” Me? Well, never.  The student half-assumed that things like a nationwide school closure had happened before. I have never even had a snow day, or any kind of “day,” and I have been teaching for 31 years.  

So there is not much wisdom I can impart to my students, to my children, even to myself, except this:  I have faith that the worst will pass, because it always has. I have been through some serious “stuff,” and I am going through some other serious “stuff” right now.  The only thing that comforts me, besides those dearest to me, is the thought that I have made it through difficult times before, so I will make it through again. Life may never be the same, but it never is, and the “new normal” is a term we share because a “new normal” is always emerging.  I cannot embrace uncertainty, I can only accept that it is the most certain thing, and that while this uncertainty will pass, there will surely be another. And still, I will survive. Until I don’t, and then uncertainty is indeed over. I remember when my mother passed right after my step-father and right before my mother-in-law last May.  I thought I could not survive any more sorrow. I felt blanketed by this horrible feeling. Somehow, in the midst of that, I comforted myself with this thought: the only way one can avoid sorrow is by not being alive. Sorrow is life, as is joy, so I have to accept sorrow as part of my gift of life. So I am now working on uncertainty, which is also entirely unavoidable.  

I like to keep Dickinson close to remind me of this universally shared anxiety of uncertainty.  Emily knew everything. Trust me.