The art of juggling multiple apocalypses

A friend recently posted on social media that she was “juggling multiple apocalypses”, and for many of us, I think, there is this sense of futility and frustration with engaging in the world as we knew it, even as it no longer exists, so the show can go on. We are back at work and school and play while fires rage and watersheds die, social bonds fray and violence is committed, hospitals fill with disease… and that is just here in our neck of the woodsnevermind all that is happening across the country and the globe. What a time to be alive.

While managing the estate of my late aunt several years ago, I found full suitcases in most of the rooms in her house. She lived in Oroville and likely put them together during the spillway crisis in 2017. She packed in preparation or in fear, or maybe both, but one would never see the latter in her. Through that potential disaster, and the fire that burned her hometown, and even in her illness at the end, she was unruffled and composed; her quiet dignity fully intact.

I kept one of those suitcases: a 1940’s hard-board traveling case with a tweed veneer, so old and fragile it houses just my newspaper columns, though it hardly seems capable of carrying a person’s life even in its heyday. It was my great-grandmother’s; a woman I know only from the grainy black and white and unsmiling pictures typical of her generation.

Also typical of her generation: she was a teenage immigrant, lived through both the World Wars, the Spanish Flu and the Great Depression. There were personal tragedies as well, and probably not that much to smile about. I’m told however, that while she was stoic, she was always kind, gentle and fair; her strength of character ironclad.

The frying pan I inherited from my aunt’s kitchen was my grandma’s. It’s unwieldy, heavy, a common Wagner made in the 40s or 50s and sold in department stores. There is no artifice in a cast iron pan, and its character comes from layers of seasoning. It can last for ages, and my familial generations are linked through nourishment cooked up in that pan. My grandma died when I was young, and my knowledge of her is also mostly from photographs-although unlike those of her mother, in all of them my grandma is smiling. There were hardships certainly, but probably the world seemed a little kinder, certainly photography became more relaxed, and my grandma’s generation found it possible to turn a smiling face to the camera.

I learned to juggle in 6th grade. It was a difficult year for me; I was far too uncool for school, but somehow I learned to keep balls in the air then. My aunt took a picture of me those years ago: I’m in the midst of juggling and unaware of the photographer. I’ve got acne, a terrible haircut, and a grin on my face. The trick I’d learned was to stay in control and do it all with a smile- because that’s what people focus on.

I appreciate that smiles come more readily now than they did generations ago, but those expressions are only worth the quality of the character behind them. ‘Apocalypse’ evolved from the Greek word apokálypsis, essentially meaning to uncover or reveal. Maybe these times have come to reveal to us a better way, to teach us which baggage to pack, and which heavy lifting to do, and which balls to keep tossing -and also what to leave behind, put down and drop. It’s not the show that needs to go on. It’s our common decency and our kindnesseven in the face of destruction and disaster- that we need to commit to. That’s what will keep us going, and that’s what our children will remember.